UK funds research into cystic fibrosis.
The UK's Health Minister, Lord Warner, has announced funding of 2.5 million GBP (3.55 million euro) to support research into gene therapy for cystic fibrosis. The debilitating lung disease, for which there is currently no cure, affects 7,500 patients in the UK. Cystic fibrosis is the most common inheritable disorder in the country and the life expectancy of children born with this disease is just 30 years. 'The NHS [National Health Service] should take maximum advantage of new genetic knowledge and technologies,' stated Lord Warner. 'Supporting this innovative research will help make sure that cystic fibrosis patients benefit as quickly as possible from gene therapy advances. This work represents a major step in our endeavour to relieve the suffering and ultimately find a cure for this terrible disease.' The funding will go to the Institute of Child Health and the UK Cystic Fibrosis Gene Therapy Consortium. The two research teams will work on different but complementary strategies and will cooperate to maximise the likely benefits. 'My group will receive about one third of the funding,' explains David Porteous from the Gene Therapy Consortium at Edinburgh University. 'The money will be used to complement the pre-clinical tests. If all goes well, we plan to start recruiting patients later in the year for a large-scale trial that will take us into 2006,' adds the Professor Cystic fibrosis is a distressing condition in which mucus continuously builds up in the lungs causing breathing difficulties and infections. Physiotherapy, antibiotics and enzyme supplements can slow the progression of the disease, but cannot cure it. Gene therapy involves either replacing, manipulating or supplementing non-functional genes with healthy genes. By correcting the inherited defect, gene therapy offers the potential to cure or ameliorate the induced disease.
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