University of York spin-out partners with pharmaceutical giant in £300,000 project
AN inventor at the University of York spin-out SimOmics has won a £300,000 grant to create a ‘virtual’ drug lab, reducing animal testing in the process of boosting drug development.
Innovate UK, sponsored by NC3Rs backed the company, which is supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Enterprise Hub.
It will use the grant to develop a ‘virtual laboratory’, intended to establish the environmental impact of drugs earlier in development, reducing the cost of assessments and the need for animal testing.
The University of York’s Environment Department and the Exeter School of Biosciences will be working with SimOmics, as well as pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, to develop the lab.
The Virtual Fish EcoToxicology Laboratory will mathematically model the exposure, uptake, metabolism and effects of future drugs on different species of fish before the drug is developed.
SimOmics is part of a consortium that recently secured almost £1m from the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) to develop a “virtual laboratory” to boost the search for new treatments for leishmaniasis, a tropical disease responsible for an estimated 30,000 deaths a year.
Professor Jon Timmis, chief executive of SimOmics, said: “Our technology will dramatically de-risk the testing of drugs and their interactions with fish.
“We also see future applications for testing the environmental impact of everything from new pesticides to printing ink.
“Ultimately, we could also model the effect of future drugs on humans to ensure that new treatments are already refined and developed to a much higher standard – before the first clinical trials ever take place.”
SimOmics was formed in 2014 after more than seven years of research by Professor Jon Timmis, Professor of Intelligent and Adaptive Systems at the University of York’s Department of Electronics and MRC funded senior lecturer in Immunology, Dr Mark Coles, of the Department of Biology at York and Hull York Medical School.
