Cross-border bid to tackle cancer

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/northern_ireland/7796692.stm

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£1.5m is to be spent on a cross-border project to develop new drugs for hard-to-treat cancers.

Scientists at Queen's University in Belfast and Trinity College in Dublin will work together to design new therapies.

Researchers at Queen's have identified a number of biological targets they hope will react to new drug compounds.

Along with colleagues at Trinity, they will design, synthesize and test the new compounds.

The project, funded by the Department of Employment and Learning, will initially create 12 jobs.

It is hoped discoveries arising from the project will lead to spin-off companies and an increase in related jobs at pharmaceutical companies through the licensing of any new drugs.

Professor Dennis McCance 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.

"Therefore, putting our medicinal chemistry expertise along with Trinity's expertise in computational chemistry will help ease a potential bottleneck in drug discovery across the island of Ireland, leading to new treatment options for those cancers with poor survival rates."