Fungal infections kill more people each year than malaria or tuberculosis, yet the field receives a fraction of the research funding it needs. This grant will turn the University of Aberdeen into a national hub for medical mycology and fungal immunology—connecting scattered UK expertise into a coordinated research and training network. The problem is that fungal diseases are neglected, underfunded, and often misdiagnosed or misrepresented. Without better fundamental science and translation, treatments lag behind rising drug resistance. If this hub succeeds, it will accelerate the flow of basic lab discoveries into new antifungal drugs and clinical diagnostics. It will also train the next generation of researchers and raise public awareness of a hidden health threat. Because the work spans from molecular immunology to pharmaceutical partnerships, the impact could reach hospital wards, GP surgeries, and the drug development pipeline—improving outcomes for patients whose infections are currently hard to treat.
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We are applying for a Strategic Award to address the vitally important, but under-resourced area of fungal disease. Aberdeen has invested heavily in this area to establish significant capacity in complementary basic science programmes. We now wish to strengthen and extend our capacity by stimulating high level cross-disciplinary and translational research locally, while simultaneously acting as a hub that harnesses relevant UK-wide expertise to promote national and international training and c ollaboration in fungal infection biology. This added capacity will promote highly innovative basic and translational research, outreach activity and national and international capacity and expertise. Our key goals are to: [1] promote research excellence and interdisciplinary scientific initiatives in the important but neglected area of medical mycology and fungal immunology; [2] integrate, expand and resource complementary skills in this field thereby increasing our understanding of fu ngal disease and translating our basic research into the clinic and pharmaceutical industry; [3] establish a consortium to coordinate a national research and training programme that harnesses the excellent, but dispersed, expertise within the UK to understand and treat fungal infections; and [4] promote the public understanding and profile of this often misrepresented and underappreciated area of science.
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