Dr Manu De Rycker

Principal Investigator/Senior Lecturer

Drug Discovery Unit, School of Life Sciences

Head of Pathogen Biology

Deputy Head of Drug Discovery Unit and Division of Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery

Portrait photo of Manu de Rycker
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Contact

Email

[email protected]

Phone

+44 (0)1382 386211

Biography

Manu De Rycker is Head of Pathogen Biology and Portfolio Leader for the kinetoplastid and antifungal drug discovery programmes at the Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) at the University of Dundee. Manu holds a Master of Science in bioscience engineering from the University of Ghent, Belgium and a PhD in molecular genetics from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Following postdoctoral work with Professor Peter Parker at the Cancer Research UK Lincoln’s Inn Field laboratories (London), he moved to the DDU at the University of Dundee in 2009 to develop high-content imaging assays for the newly started visceral leishmaniasis drug discovery programme.

Manu now heads the group that develop and run cell-based assays for the parasitology and antifungal programmes in the DDU. The team has successfully built extensive screening cascades for Leishmania donovani and Trypanosoma cruzi that comprise high-throughput primary screening assays as well as advanced secondary assays with high physiological relevance, including assays for persister parasites. These cascades have proven pivotal to rapidly identify new compounds with the best chance of demonstrating in vivo efficacy. For this work the team were co-recipients of the 2024 DNDi Project of the Year award. The group also investigate fundamental biology relevant to drug discovery, enable new modalities for anti-infective drug discovery and work on developing a screening cascade for Cryptococcus drug discovery.

As Portfolio Leader for Kinetoplastid Drug Discovery Manu leads a substantial drug discovery programme focused on delivering new pre-clinical candidates for Chagas disease. In collaboration with GSK this programme has developed two new pre-clinical candidates for visceral leishmaniasis. Manu works closely with biologists, chemists and pharmacologists to deliver further candidates for these neglected tropical diseases. In 2024 the team were awarded the Biochemical Society Award for Industry and Academic Collaboration. Recently Manu has also started building an antifungal drug discovery programme, to tackle deadly invasive fungal diseases that disproportionately affect people in low- and middle-income countries.

Research

Key interests:

  • Developing fit-for-purpose drug discovery cascades for neglected tropical diseases. More information on our Chagas disease screening cascade work can be found here: https://wcair.dundee.ac.uk/research/making-a-medicine-start-here/chagas-disease-screen/
  • Understanding the nature of T. cruzi persister parasites and exploiting this knowledge for drug discovery purposes
  • Development of new pre-clinical candidates for neglected tropical diseases, in particular visceral leishmaniasis and Chagas disease
  • High-throughput and high-content cell-based screening for parasitic diseases
  • Development of new assays and methodology for drug discovery
  • Application of new drug modalities such as PROTACs for neglected tropical diseases
  • Discovery and development of new anti-fungals

Group members

  • Abbie Brewer
  • Master Chisale
  • Luciana De Sousa Paradela
  • Marta Garcia Sanchez
  • Julia Haddow
  • Lorna MacLean
  • Christy Paterson
  • John Thomas
  • Juliana Pacheco da Silva
  • Leanne Reid
View full research profile and publications

Teaching

I teach drug discovery for parasitic diseases in the 4th year Parasitology Module (BS42012)

Awards

Award Year
Major Personal Funding Awards / MRC New Investigator Grant 2020

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