Manchester/Liverpool universities - Tackling side-effects

A £3.7 million grant from the Medical Research Council will help fund a research centre aimed at reducing the unwanted side-effects of prescribed drugs. The grant has been awarded to the universities of Manchester and Liverpool, which will work alongside pharmaceutical companies to improve understanding of adverse drug reactions. The results will help industry to improve the design, tailoring and selection of drugs. Kevin Park, director of the new Centre for Drug Safety, said: "Our team will focus on drugs that have the ability to treat disease but may, in some cases, react badly to the biology of individual patients."