MRC funds new centre to make medicines more safe
8 October 2008
The Medical Research Council (MRC) has awarded £3.7 million to develop a new centre aimed at reducing the risks of adverse drug effects. Scientists at the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester will work with leading pharmaceutical companies to improve understanding of adverse drug reactions and investigate how to improve the design, tailoring and selection of drugs. The new MRC Centre for Drug Safety Science will help develop new medicines for the future.
Professor Kevin Park, Director of the new MRC Centre for Drug Safety Science based at the University of Liverpool’s School of Biomedical Sciences, said: “Science has made huge advances in drug therapies for a wide range of medical conditions and in the majority of patients these treatments work extremely effectively and save lives. Our team will focus on drugs that have the ability to treat disease but may, in some cases, react badly to the biology of individual patients.”
Adverse drug reactions result in one in 15 hospital admissions and cost the NHS in excess of £650 million every year. The MRC is investing £3.7 million to set up this world-leading centre to investigate drug safety and plug gaps in current research. It is hoped the centre, which will collaborate closely with pharmaceutical partners and the government agency that regulates the use of medicines (MHRA), will be able to help tackle this problem and improve patient care.
Professor Park added: “The centre will bring together experts from academia, research institutes, government and industry and will provide training programmes for clinical and non-clinical drug safety scientists. This collaborative work is essential if we are to improve our understanding of why some patients react badly to a particular drug.”
The centre will also be supported by AstraZeneca, Novartis, Pfizer, Merck and work closely with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.
Ian Kimber, Professor of Toxicology at the University of Manchester, added: "The centre represents a unique opportunity to exploit the complementary skills of the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester, alongside those of the industrial, academic and regulatory collaborators, to tackle fundamental pharmacological issues and thus provide improved approaches to the development of safe and effective new drugs."
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