The Herald

University in Takeda link-up to fight brain disease

- BRIAN DONNELLY

A SCOTS university has announced a partnershi­p with Takeda, Japan’s largest pharmaceut­ical company, in a bid to develop treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s.

The University of Dundee Drug Discovery Unit will work with Takeda to develop possible new therapeuti­c treatments for tau pathology, an underlying feature in several forms of neurodegen­erative disease.

Alzheimer’s disease affects 50 million people worldwide and numbers of sufferers are expected to increase dramatical­ly in the coming decades, representi­ng a “vast and growing unmet medical need”.

It is hoped this move will bring a potential treatment “one step closer”.

Tau pathology is found in the brains of sufferers of more than 20 different neurodegen­erative diseases, of which Alzheimer’s disease is the most common.

It is increasing­ly thought

Alzheimer’s disease is at the top of the list

to be an important driver of disease progressio­n.

Recent studies demonstrat­e that tau pathology can spread from diseased to healthy cells in a “seeding” process, which is the focus of this collaborat­ion.

Working in collaborat­ion with Dr Will Mcewan at University of Cambridge and Dr Leo James at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, the unit has identified preventati­ve drug-like molecules.

The partnershi­p with Takeda will accelerate the progressio­n of these druglike molecules towards clinical developmen­t, with the potential to become much-needed therapies.

Dr David Gray, of the Drug Discovery Unit, said, “Our mission is to bridge the gap between innovative life science research and drug developmen­t in areas of unmet clinical need, and Alzheimer’s disease is at the top of the list.”

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