Scientists may be one step closer to finding new drugs to fight MRSA, cancers and other diseases, after CABI, a leading bioservices organisation announced that its fungal collection will be screened by the University of Strathclyde.
CABI houses one of the worlds largest genetic resource collections of fungi, numbered at over 28,000 strains, including Flemings original penicillin producing isolate. They will be supplying the University of Strathclydes Institute for Drug Research (SIDR) with extracts from filamentous fungi which will be screened to identify pharmaceutically active compounds, which could potentially be developed into drugs.
Joan Kelley, Executive Director Bioservices, CABI said:
This is a really exciting collaboration and we are looking forward to working with the expertise of the scientists at SIDR. We are hopeful that our partnership will prove the winning formula for discovering new pharmaceutical drugs to fight cancers, diseases and resistant strains of infections such as MRSA.
SIDR brings together scientists from different disciplines to focus on drug discovery. They have developed test systems to detect biological activity in samples of natural products that could lead to new medicinal products. Previous work at SIDR found activities from plant extracts against diabetes, obesity and psoriasis.
Professor Alan Harvey, Director of SIDR said:
We are delighted to be working with CABI and to have access to their fantastic source of fungal samples. We hope that this novel source of chemical diversity will contain new compounds that can be used to point the way to new drugs for serious diseases.
CABI currently uses its fungal collection, along with the expertise of its scientists to offer a range of services to businesses, including fungal identification, sales, preservations, patenting, training and consultancy. The partnership with SIDR will see CABIs collection taken one step
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Contact: Lynsey Clark
l.clark@cabi.org
0044-149-182-9361
CABI
13-Jun-2007