The Medical Research Council (MRC) has awarded a grant of £1.3m to professors from the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews, in Scotland, UK to develop new drugs to combat eczema.
The early stage drug development will centre around a gene, filaggrin, which was discovered by Prof Irwin McLean and colleagues in Dundee last year. Almost half of all children with severe eczema have a fault in their filaggrin gene that leads to inflammation of the skin. The grant will help the three experts look for new drugs to boost skin barrier function. There are several different pathways that will be explored to uncover the best possible treatments.
Unlike existing drugs for eczema, which target the immune system, the new drug development programme is aimed at the skin barrier defect which is the root cause of the disease.
The research will take advantage of Prof Julie Frearson's Drug Discovery Unit at the University of Dundee which was opened last year in the £20m Sir James Black Centre at the School of Life Sciences. The unit allows for screening of drugs to discover which will be most effective in combating a disease.
It is expected that drug screening will start in the new year.
