Bill Gates Foundation awards Scots start-up £1.8m to speed up drug discovery

A Scottish start-up specialising in accelerating drug discovery has been awarded a grant of £1.8m from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Edinburgh-based PhaSER Biomedical is developing models that will play a vital part in helping researchers combat diseases like Malaria, TB, HIV, pandemic preparedness, and non-hormonal contraception.

The funding will support a three year programme that will see PhaSER technology become a collaborating institution within the Global Health Discovery Collaboratory Programme, which is funded by the Gates Foundation.

One of the PhaSER produced “mouse models”, named 8HUM, will “humanise key pathways” involved in the metabolism and disposition of drugs, to all the foundation grantees.

PhaSER said the humanised model has the potential to transform drug discovery by significantly reducing development times, increasing the probability of delivering safe drugs to patients across the globe.

Professor Roland Wolf, PhaSER’s founder, said: “We are delighted to receive this support from the Gates Foundation, which will allow us to provide these valuable mice to drug discovery groups working on some of the most pressing global health care challenges we are faced with today.

“We look forward to continuing our work to accelerate and improve drug discovery activities.”

PhaSER was formed in October 2022 to exploit a unique transgenic mouse model developed in a collaboration between Prof. Roland Wolf at University of Dundee, CXR biosciences, Taconic Farms and Scottish Enterprise.