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"Red Queen" Research Centre For Sussex

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AIDS, E.coli, TB, meningitis: disease organisms show no signs of losing their power to terrify us. New strains appear and, even with 'old' diseases, drug resistance is an increasing problem. Like the Red Queen in Alice, we keep having to run faster in order to stay in the same place.

Sussex is playing its part in the fight against disease with a new Centre of Excellence in Biomolecular Design and Drug Development. Douglas Young of CPES and Dek Woolfson of Biols, plus other faculty and co-workers in both schools, will be collaborating to develop new drug weapons against disease. The Centre will enable chemists and biologists to co-operate, engineering new molecules to exploit weaknesses in the armoury of the diseases which afflict us. As antibiotics lose their potency we will need this sort of technology to prevent a reversion to the dark ages of the pre-antibiotic era.

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Friday January 17th 1997