Jan Balzarini appointed Honorary Visiting Professor by Cardiff University
4 January 2011
The many years of successful collaboration between Professor Jan Balzarini from the Rega Institute, Leuven, Belgium, with Professor Chris McGuigan and colleagues in the Welsh School of Pharmacy, have been recognised by the University through the award of the title Honorary Visiting Professor to Jan Balzarini at the end of 2010.
Chris McGuigan and Jan Balzarini have worked together on the development of a novel concept of Pro-tides - specific precursors of the active nucleotide which are well absorbed and specifically broken down inside the target cell. Indeed their work was recognised in 2001 with the Rene Descartes Award of the European Union.
(A current Powerpoint presentation from Prof McGuigan describing Pro Tides is available here. )
The novel drug FV-100, which recently completed phase II clinical trial in the U.S., is another direct result of this collaboration. FV-100 shows promise as an anti-shingles drug and was the outcome from astute research into a serendipitous finding from Jan Balzarini's research group of samples sent from Cardiff. The full story is recorded here.
Welcoming the news, Prof Gary Baxter, Head of School said: 'It is a great honour to have such a world leading scientist as Prof Balzarini associated with the School. We hope that an already productive interaction with him can flourish even more with this appointment'.
