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Academic drug discovery within the United Kingdom: a reassessment

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 14, page 510 (2015)Cite this article

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In 2014, Tralau-Stewart et al. published an overview of academic drug discovery efforts in the United Kingdom based on a survey they conducted (UK academic drug discovery. Nature Rev. Drug Discov. 13, 15–16 (2014))1. They observed that academic screening within the United Kingdom is comparable to that in the United States (discussed in Ref. 2) with regard to primary therapeutic focus (with cancer, infectious disease and cardiovascular disease constituting the most highly prioritized therapeutic indications) and areas of unmet medical need. Parallels were also drawn between the motivational drivers and annual operating costs of screening in both countries. However, regarding infrastructure, it was reported that most drug discovery programmes in academic screening groups (ASGs) in the United Kingdom were conducted in a traditional research group (that is, a team of postdoctoral researchers, Ph.D. students and technicians led by a single principal investigator), with only 13% of groups operating in centres dedicated to drug discovery. The most surprising finding was that “access to high-throughput screening (HTS) facilities and associated compound libraries were not reported by any UK group” (Ref. 1). Tralau-Stewart et al. clearly stated that the responses provided a “snapshot” of academic research at the time of the survey (2013) and not a comprehensive analysis, as some groups may not have received or responded to the survey1. However, it seems to us that the presence of centre-led ASGs and industry-standard drug discovery programmes conducted within an academic environment in the United Kingdom was substantially understated by the survey results. Therefore, we conducted another investigation of the academic drug discovery landscape in the United Kingdom by identifying academic drug discovery units and facilities and analysing their characteristics, which we discuss here.

We identified 24 dedicated drug discovery facilities in the United Kingdom (Table 1; see also the UK Drug Discovery Consortium website in Further information). These facilities have a range of operational frameworks: some are academic facilities operated by universities with several sources of funding; several are operated by charitable organizations; and others are industrial facilities sited on or near to academic campuses. The common theme linking these groups is that they are all open-access drug discovery facilities that are accessible by UK-wide academic groups, and each facility employs some personnel from academia, thereby strengthening links to the UK academic community. These groups may therefore be better referred to collectively as academic and not-for-profit screening groups; hereon, we refer to them as ASGs.

Table 1 Drug discovery facilities in the United Kingdom*
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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute, Glasgow, G61 1BD, UK

    Emma Shanks

  2. Translational Research Resource Center, Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Robin Ketteler

  3. Target Discovery Institute, Oxford, OX3 7FZ, UK

    Daniel Ebner

Authors
  1. Emma Shanks
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  2. Robin Ketteler
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  3. Daniel Ebner
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emma Shanks.

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Related links

FURTHER INFORMATION

Adhiron Screening Facility

Beatson Institute Drug Discovery Unit

Beatson Institute RNAi Screening Facility

Birmingham Drug Discovery Facility

Bioscreening Technology Group

CRT Discovery Laboratory

CRUK Cancer Therapeutics Unit

Drug Discovery Priority Group

Dundee Drug Discovery Unit

Edinburgh Cancer Discovery Unit

European Lead Factory

European Screening Centre Newhouse

High-throughput Screening Facility

Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology

Manchester Institute Drug Discovery Unit

Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology Technology Group

MRCT

Queen's University Belfast Drug Discovery group

National Phenotypic Screening Centre

Scottish Bioscreening Facility

Sheffield RNAi Screening Facility

SITraN Drug Discovery Suite

Target Discovery Institute

Translational Discovery Group

UK Drug Discovery Consortium

Zebrafish Small Molecule Screening Unit

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Shanks, E., Ketteler, R. & Ebner, D. Academic drug discovery within the United Kingdom: a reassessment. Nat Rev Drug Discov 14, 510 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd4661

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