Center for Drug Safety Sciences created

UNC-Chapel Hill's medical and pharmaceutical schools will partner with an N.C.-based medical research institute to ensure that experimental drugs are safe before they go on the market.

The Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences and UNC announced last week plans for a Center for Drug Safety Sciences a pooling of their resources to research the safety of new drug products. UNC is the first school to partner with the institute.

The University will provide the medical faculty for the research while Hamner will provide funding through grants from the Environmental Protection Agency the National Institutes of Health and other branches of the federal government.

The center located on the Hamner campus in Research Triangle Park is the first of its kind to open worldwide said Paul Watkins" the future director for the center and a UNC professor of medicine.

Watkins described the opportunity to direct the center as ""a dream come true"" and said the center meets a critical need in the pharmaceutical industry.

""One major goal of our center is to develop tests that can identify the susceptible people so that they won't receive a drug that will cause this reaction in them.

""Because we can't identify the susceptible individuals currently" many drugs are never approved even though they could be beneficial to the vast majority of patients taking them" Watkins said.

Drugs are often tested on animals before human trials to rule out severe miscalculations, but Watkins said that's not a perfect system.

Drugs that hurt animals are rarely advanced in drug development. Animals don't perfectly predict humans"" he said, adding that he hopes to make all preclinical testing, including that on animals and cell cultures, more accurate.

The Hamner Institute is providing most of the initial funding, but the center is expected to come up with funds itself after the first year. UNC will only be providing salaries for their faculty members, said William Greenlee, president and CEO of Hamner.

UNC faculty will be able to work with the institute's faculty to secure larger grants for the center's research.

Hamner also is looking into similar arrangements with Duke University, Wake Forest University and East Carolina University.

Right now" we're still in discussion mode with other schools" Greenlee said. The difference between our relationship with UNC and with these other universities is that at UNC we have a true partnership. Other schools are just looking for a state of collaboration that could evolve into a partnership.""



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