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Michele Lufino
Michele Lufino

A new collaborative drug discovery project in Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA) between the University of Oxford, Ataxia UK, Pfizer Inc, UCL and Imperial College London was recently announced which will be led by Dr Michele Lufino of our lab.

The collaboration was initiated by Ataxia UK, the national charity for people living with ataxia. It brings together academic researchers who will work together with Pfizer scientists based both in the US (Cambridge MA) and at Pfizer’s new Genetic Medicine Institute in London.

Friedreich's ataxia is an inherited, progressive disorder that affects co-ordination, balance and speech with patients typically left unable to walk around 15 years after diagnosis.

Dr Michele Lufino, commented: “Finding therapies for Friedreich’s Ataxia is a challenging undertaking which requires a radically novel research approach. At Oxford we believe that collaboration is key to succeed in this complex task and for this reason we are particularly proud of the collaboration that Ataxia UK has helped establish by bringing together leading researchers from industry and academia.”

The programme will initially run for three years and aims to develop a potential new medicine or therapy for Friedreich’s ataxia that, if successful, may be tested in clinical trials. Read more here