Irish universities embark on

New treatment options for cancers with low survival rates are to be developed as the result of a project between Queen’s University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin.

Researchers at Queen’s have identified a number of biological targets, such as suicide genes in cells, which they hope will be stimulated by new drug compounds. Along with colleagues at Trinity, they will design, synthesize and test the new compounds.

The funding for the cross-border project comes from Northern Ireland’s department for employment and learning.

Professor Dennis McCance, director of the centre for cancer research and cell biology, said: ‘Queen’s has expertise in identifying potential biological targets, which could react to drug compounds. Our partners in Trinity are leaders in computational chemistry, whereby computers are used to design drugs given the structure of the target in the body.’

He added that putting these skills together would help ease a potential bottleneck in drug discovery across Ireland, leading to new treatment options for those cancers with poor survival rates.

The project is the first cross-border project of its type and will initially create around 12 jobs. It is hoped that discoveries arising from the project will lead to spin-off companies and an increase in related jobs at pharmaceutical companies through the licensing of new drugs.

The project is the latest in a round of projects at Queen’s to be awarded funding. In December 2008, it received £7m under the cross-border research and development funding programme, which is being used to create five world-class research centres.

The centres will focus on next-generation mobile networks, safety and traceability of agri-foods, diet and obesity, biomedical informatics research to accelerate drug discovery and identifying novel therapeutics of importance to many chronic diseases.