F2G and university team up for NOFUN research

BIO-medical company F2G and scientists at the The University of Manchester are to team up in £5m+ project to find new treatments for resistant fungal infections.

The pioneering Eccles-based company, which last year raised $30m to fund developments, has received €6.1m (5.2m) from the EU to discover and develop anti-fungal drugs to treat serious, life-threatening fungal infections.

Called the ‘NOFUN project’ it is a collaborative project under the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission which brings together five partners to accelerate the development of a number of F2G’s broad spectrum anti-fungal agents.

The company, which was spun-out of the University of Manchester in 2001, said in a statement that around  two million people die each year because of fungal infection. The problem is increasing as resistance is increasing to the most common drugs used to treat these diseases.

NOFUN will use F2G’s discovery assets and the University’s fungal genomics platforms in addition to the drug development and characterisation expertise of the other partners.

Participants in the NOFUN Project are F2G Ltd (UK), The University of Manchester (UK), Pharmacelsus GmbH (Germany), OncoTargeting AB (Sweden) and Universitat i Rovira Virgili (Spain).

Dr Mike Birch of F2G and scientific co-ordinator of NOFUN added: “Competition for funding in this call was immense and the NOFUN award represents a significant validation of the project and the partners. F2G is delighted to lead the scientific program to develop much needed new antifungal agents”.

Dr Mike Bromley, NOFUN project co-ordinator from The Manchester Fungal Infection Group at The University of Manchester, added: “We are delighted that this project has been funded and it confirms The University of Manchester as a centre of excellence in fungal biology and disease.

“Hopefully this cash boost will help us to create new treatments to tackle serious, life-threatening fungal infections.”