30 November 2013

Richard Leduc, a researcher at the CHUS Centre de recherche clinique Étienne-Le Bel (CRCELB – clinical research centre) and professor at the Université de Sherbrooke, is part of the group that won the first-ever Discovery Fast Track competition held by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

The Sherbrooke researcher is the only Canadian among the eight winners. These winning scientists will work with GSK’s Discovery Partnerships with Academia (DPAc) team to quickly identify new compounds that can be used to test their hypotheses. At the end of the project, new drugs may be marketed to treat unmet medical needs.

Leduc’s project is designed to develop new therapeutic strategies for managing iron overload.

“The fact that our project was selected by GSK is an unbelievable opportunity,” explained the Director of the Department of Pharmacology in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.  “Otherwise, we would have never had access to the millions of molecules we needed to search for the one that may be responsible for controlling the enzyme that interests us.”

The first-ever Discovery Fast Track competition received 142 projects from 70 universities, academic research institutes, clinics, and hospitals in the United States and Canada.

Sources: Université de Sherbrooke and GSK