Hosted by the School of Medicine at Cardiff University

The Medicines Discovery Institute is a multidisciplinary team of around 35 drug discovery scientists embedded within the Cardiff University academic environment. We are focussed on delivering new drugs to patients with an unmet need, with an initial focus on neuroscience and mental health that has more recently expanded into oncology. But without the resources and infrastructure of pharmaceutical companies are we doomed to fail or can we harness our resources (primarily from the MRC and the Wellcome Trust) in a more nimble and flexible manner?

Prof. Atack has spent over 30 years pursuing a variety of neuroscience drug discovery projects, initially in industry (20 years with Merck and thereafter Janssen) and for the last decade within academia (Sussex University, Cardiff University). He has worked on projects in the earliest stages of the drug discovery process (i.e., target validation and high-throughput screening) all the way through to clinical development (Phase 2 clinical trials). His pharmacological expertise is GABAA receptor modulators (e.g., “next generation” benzodiazepines) and he has a particular interest in preclinical in vivo assays that can be translated into the clinical (e.g., receptor occupancy assays of target engagement). He has built a portfolio of projects within the Medicines Discovery Institute that span the range of preclinical drug discovery activities all the way through to their flagship schizophrenia drug project that is due to commence Phase 1 clinical trials later this summer.

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