Dundee's PhaSER wins $2.7M Gates Foundation grant renewal for neglected-disease drugs
What's the deal? PhaSER Biomedical, a Dundee biotech, has secured a £2 million ($2.7 million) two-year grant renewal from the Gates FoundationDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → to support drug discovery for infectious diseases. The award renews a $2.3 million grant received in 2024.
What does PhaSER do? Formed in 2022, the company commercialises the 8HUM mouse — a transgenic model humanised for the pathways that govern how drugs are metabolised and cleared from the body. It was developed by professor Roland Wolf at the University of Dundee alongside CXR BiosciencesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Taconic Farms, and Scottish Enterprise.
Why it matters: The platform helps drug developers see how a compound behaves in people, tackling a major bottleneck caused by mouse-specific metabolic differences. During the first funding period, researchers applied it across programmes targeting tuberculosis, malaria, schistosomiasis, and Chagas disease.
The grant keeps PhaSER in the Global Health Discovery Collaboratory, giving Gates grantees worldwide access to its models and expertise in drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, and translational study design.
What's the money for? PhaSER is building its team, recruiting experts in computational modelling and AI. It has appointed Richard Bickerton, a co-founder of Exscientia, as a non-executive director, and is now engaging with investors to accelerate growth.
"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," said Wolf, founder of PhaSER Biomedical.
The signal: The award is research support for a specialist translational tool — not evidence PhaSER has moved a treatment into clinical trials. It lands amid heavy Dundee-led infectious-disease funding, including a £9.9 million WellcomeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → award in 2026 for schistosomiasis drug discovery and a £17.9 million fungal-disease programme announced in 2025.
Read more: insidermedia.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
