Two-year award continues PhaSER's scientific partnership with Gates Foundation grantees worldwide through the Global Health Discovery Collaboratory
Builds on a $2.3m award in 2024, during which PhaSER’s humanised 8HUM mouse model was applied across numerous disease programmes
PhaSER is expanding its team, has appointed Exscientia co-founder Richard Bickerton as a non-executive director, and in talks with investors to accelerate growth
Dundee, Scotland, UK – Monday 9 November 2026 – Scottish-based PhaSER Biomedical (PhaSER) today announced it has received a $2.7 million (£2 million), two-year grant renewal from the Gates Foundation, to support the discovery of new treatments to some of the world’s most neglected diseases. The funding continues PhaSER’s role as a collaborator in the Global Health Discovery Collaboratory, giving unilateral access for Gates grantees world-wide to PhaSER’s unique humanised models and its scientific expertise in drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, bioanalysis, computational modelling and translational study design.
PhaSER was formed in October 2022 to exploit a unique transgenic mouse model developed in a collaboration between Prof. Roland Wolf at University of Dundee, CXR biosciences, Taconic Farms and Scottish Enterprise. The 8HUM mouse is humanised for the key pathways that govern how drugs are metabolised and eliminated from the body. This lets drug developers establish how a compound behaves in people and addresses major bottlenecks in drug development programmes, particularly due to mouse specific metabolic issues.
A new paradigm for preclinical decision-making
The renewal builds on the $2.3 million award PhaSER received in 2024 from the Gates Foundation. During the first funding period, Collaboratory investigators applied the 8HUM platform across a diverse portfolio of global health programmes including tuberculosis, malaria, schistosomiasis and Chagas Disease, strengthening confidence in candidate selection and enabling programme progression. The findings have demonstrated the value of building human-relevant metabolism into translational drug discovery across infectious diseases of global importance.
Beyond the Collaboratory, PhaSER's ambition is for 8HUM to become the standard mouse model in drug discovery, allowing DMPK, pharmacology, safety and regulatory teams to work in a more integrated and informative way. Generating a broad panel of clinically relevant data early in development, incorporating safety, efficacy, toxicity, clinical pharmacokinetics and drug-drug interaction liability, helps organisations identify the compounds most likely to succeed in the clinic.
PhaSER is also using 8HUM in the development of its computational model platform, HERALD (Human Exposure and Response Analyser in Linked Drugs). HERALD is PhaSER’s AI-driven drug-drug interaction analyser, designed to tackle one of the most significant challenges in public health, namely adverse drug reactions in patients taking multiple medicines (polypharmacy). It is being developed through a close multidisciplinary partnership between PhaSER, the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the University of Dundee.
PhaSER is currently building its team and preparing for the next phase of growth. As well as recruiting experts in computational modelling and AI, the business has appointed Richard Bickerton, a co-founder of Exscientia, to the board as a non-executive director.
With growing interest from industry and regulators, alongside funding support from the Gates Foundation, PhaSER is currently engaging with investors to help accelerate its development and growth.
Professor Roland Wolf, Founder of PhaSER Biomedical, said:
“We are really excited about the continuation of this Collaboratory programme. Over the last two years we have seen how the humanised models provide human-relevant data that can rescue promising compounds, de-risk candidates and save valuable drug development time for the treatment of diseases that affect millions of people. The renewal lets us build on our significant progress, with new models and capabilities shaped in close collaboration between PhaSER, Gates Foundation grantees and the University of Dundee.”
Chris Wardhaugh, CEO of PhaSER Biomedical, said:
“The continued support from the Gates Foundation will support our work using humanised models in accelerating drug development. What makes the Gates Collaboratory work so well is partnership and we are thrilled to continue working side by side with world-class investigators, and with our colleagues at the Drug Discovery Unit at the University of Dundee, to design the right studies and turn complex data into clear decisions.
This is the same philosophy that is proving so fruitful in our partnership with MHRA, involving clinicians, applied mathematicians, data analysts and pharmacokinetic scientists to combine data from our humanised models with clinical trial and real-world data, machine learning and computational modelling - true interdisciplinary teamwork. Human-relevant evidence earlier in development means better choices about which medicines to take forward, and faster progress for the people who need them most."
