Drug discovery
The Scottish life sciences industry is at the forefront of cutting-edge research and is a global leader in the drug discovery and development process.
Drug discovery in Scotland
Leading drug research and development companies are supported here by an extensive knowledge base, first-rate industrial technology and universities with exceptional links to industry.
In Feb 2011, Scottish company BigDNA was granted a patent for its core bacteriophage vaccine platform in Japan, opening up this market for future vaccines using this technology, including vaccines against influenza and chlamydia. This followed the announcement last year of the patent granted for BigDNA’s hepatitis B vaccine in Japan.
BigDNA successfully raised £2 million of funding from the venture fund arm of Scottish Enterprise and private investors. This funding enabled the company to develop its platform vaccine delivery technology towards clinical proof of concept.
“This is an important commercial milestone for BigDNA and is great news for Scotland. Japan is an important region for us being the third largest market for vaccines and it is forecast that vaccine uptake in Japan is set to increase.”
- Dr John March, Big DNA’s CEO
Read our BigDNA case study to learn more about their success overseas
What is drug discovery?
Drug discovery is a generic term for the discovery, development and approval of new chemical compounds or biological products that can be used to treat human disease. This can encompass some areas of stem cell research and regenerative medicine, bioinformatics and translational medicine.
Scotland outperforms the rest of the UK in many areas of drug research and development
Key academics in this field include Professor Sir Philip Cohen, from the University of Dundee, and Professor Roland Wolf, Director of the Biomedical Research Centre at the University of Dundee and Honorary Director of Cancer Research UK Molecular Pharmacology Unit.
Scotland has key strengths in the following areas of drug discovery:
Clinical research and drug development in Scotland
Scotland has an established network of over 50 pharmaceutical clinical trials support and Contract Research Organisations (CROs) providing pre-clinical and clinical contract research services.