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What You Should Know
- Dundee, Scotland-based preclinical and computational drug discovery firm PhaSER Biomedical announced that it has received a $2.7M (£2 million), two-year grant renewal from the Gates Foundation.
- The funding extends PhaSER’s participation in the Global Health Discovery Collaboratory, providing worldwide Gates Foundation grantees with unilateral access to PhaSER’s humanised preclinical models and expertise in drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics (DMPK), bioanalysis, and translational study design.
- The renewal builds directly on a $2.3 million Gates Foundation award granted in 2024, during which Collaboratory investigators applied PhaSER’s proprietary 8HUM humanised mouse model across global health programs targeting tuberculosis, malaria, schistosomiasis, and Chagas disease.
The 8HUM Platform: Replacing Murine Blind Spots with Human Metabolic Ground Truth
Founded in October 2022 to commercialize transgenic technology developed through a collaboration between Professor Roland Wolf at the University of Dundee, CXR Biosciences, Taconic Farms, and Scottish Enterprise, PhaSER Biomedical re-engineers preclinical candidate validation:
- Humanised Hepatic Clearance and Elimination: The 8HUM transgenic mouse model is genetically engineered to express human metabolic pathways governing drug breakdown and elimination. By replicating human pharmacokinetics in vivo, drug developers can establish how a novel compound will behave in humans prior to clinical dosing, preventing late-stage clinical attrition and rescuing viable molecules that fail conventional rodent screens.
- Proven Global Health Portfolio Impact: During the initial 2024–2026 Gates Foundation grant cycle, Collaboratory investigators deployed the 8HUM model across high-burden infectious disease pipelines, including tuberculosis, malaria, schistosomiasis, and Chagas disease. The human-relevant data strengthened candidate selection confidence and enabled stalled therapeutic programs to advance toward clinical testing.
- Standardizing Preclinical Integration: Beyond infectious disease programs, PhaSER aims to establish 8HUM as an industry-wide preclinical standard, enabling DMPK, pharmacology, toxicology, and regulatory affairs teams to evaluate safety, efficacy, and drug-drug interaction (DDI) liabilities simultaneously on a unified, human-relevant biological baseline.
Professor Roland Wolf, Founder of PhaSER Biomedical, outlined the translational impact: “We are really excited about the continuation of this Collaboratory programme. Over the last two years we have seen how the humanised models provide human-relevant data that can rescue promising compounds, de-risk candidates and save valuable drug development time for the treatment [of] diseases that affect millions of people. The renewal lets us build on our significant progress, with new models and capabilities shaped in close collaboration between PhaSER, Gates Foundation grantees and the University of Dundee.”
