The Business Secretary Greg Clark, launching the new Rosalind Franklin Institute (RFI) in Harwell, Oxfordshire earlier this month, also announced a first wave of major projects.
The aim is to develop an integrated suite of new technologies to accelerate the discovery of high-quality lead molecules, dramatically reducing the cost of drug discovery.
According to Clark the new project will pioneer fully-automated hands-free molecular discovery that will help to radically speed up drug development.
“We’re looking at drug development that will be up to ten times faster than at present and this could help to transform the UK’s pharmaceutical industry,” explained Professor James Naismith, Director of the Research Complex at Harwell.
New drugs are discovered through a slow process that can take up to ten years and is extremely expensive. Drug development relies on optimising candidate molecules to allow the discovery of a drug that can treat an underlying disease.
The discovery of drugs relies on the design, synthesis and testing of sets of molecules and, according to Professor Adam Nelson from the University of Leeds, “Is a rather conservative process - using a small number of building block types and a limited suite of reactions means we are only exploring a very small area of chemical space.”
According to Professor Naismith, “The institute will have a unique design and harness robotics and artificial intelligence to automate the discovery process, allowing hundreds or thousands of candidate molecules to be investigated at a time.
“We want to find higher quality starting points for drug discovery to maximise the chances of success at later stages in the discovery pipeline.”
At the heart of the new facility will be new instruments that will allow the direct observation of the interactions between drug candidates and target proteins.
| “The institute will have a unique design and harness robotics and AI to automate the discovery process.” - Professor James Naismith |
“At the moment, the methods for doing this are slow and often don’t allow you to directly see the detailed hydrogen bonding interactions - understanding how proteins and drug candidates recognise each other is crucial for enabling effective drug discovery,” said Professor Ian Walmsey, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research & Innovation at the University of Oxford and Chair of the RFI’s Interim Board.
“The RFI will look to pioneer disruptive technologies and new ways of working, leading to new diagnostics, new drugs, and new treatments for millions of patients worldwide”
The Institute is an independent organisation funded by the UK government through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and operated by ten UK universities.
Among the projects that Clarke announced, amounting to £6million, are an advanced real-time video camera, a crucial component in a new technique that uses light and sound to eradicate some of the most lethal forms of cancer; a project that will be pioneering fully-automated hands-free molecular discovery to produce drugs faster and a new facility that will revolutionise the way samples are produced and harness AI to generate new drugs for clinical testing within a few weeks.
Commenting Professor Philip Nelson, EPSRC’s Executive Chair, said: “Research here at the Harwell hub, and at the universities that form the spokes of the Institute, will help the UK maintain a leading position in the application of engineering and physical sciences to problems in the life sciences.”
The RFI will operate on a ‘hub and spokes’ model, with a central hub at the Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire, delivered by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
The hub, which is due to open in 2020, will be home to 150 researchers and will work closely with neighbouring facilities that include the Diamond Light Source and STFC’s Central Laser Facility.
