Fungal Research Trust activities Aim to Build a Centre of Excellence – Direct research support – Direct clinical fungal lab support – Postgraduate training – Support of “Fungal” conferences – Travel Grants for conferences – Aspergillus website sponsor

Direct Research Support 6 UK institutions – Universities of Manchester, London (Imperial and Birbeck), Aberystwyth, Glasgow, and Kew Gardens European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases and European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer ~ £1M spent over 12 years Major facilitating role - assisting UK survey of fungi (Kew Gardens), - enabling genomic sequencing Aspergillus (Manchester)

Major discoveries >80 research publications Tissue damaging enzymes from Aspergillus (1996) Resistance in Aspergillus (1997) Random method of knocking out genes in Aspergillus for new drug discovery (2001) Importance of fungal infection of diabetic feet (2001) Innate immune defect in ‘normal’ people with chronic aspergillosis (2001) Increased disease in Candida with a gene knockout (2004)

Direct clinical fungal lab support Built and partially maintained a national service for antifungal testing since 1991 Made a major contribution internationally to describing resistance tests Contributed directly to the European standard for resistance testing Determined the need for monitoring of antifungal levels of voriconazole and validated new testing procedures Contributed to training of Clinical Scientists

Postgraduate degrees 11 PhD’s (3 more on the way) 4 MSc’s 2 MD’s

Founded 1998, only website devoted to the disease and organism causing it, comprehensive

Patients section of the Aspergillus website

Founded 1998, only website devoted to the disease and organism causing it, comprehensive

Founded 1998, only website devoted to the disease and organism causing it, comprehensive

Image section of the Aspergillus website

Aspergillus Website Statistics Jan-00Jul-00Jan-01Jul-01Jan-02Jul-02Jan-03Jul-03Jan-04 Number of pages served per month.

Where do we want to go? Need for more primary research – connection between fungi and Asthma is relatively poorly understood and appears rarely in the scientific literature – risk factors Need more research into: – better diagnostic tools – earlier and more accurate detection Research into aspergillus in children - a major killer in childhood leukemia Need to support young clinical scientists

Where do we want to go? All this needs dedication and vision and MONEY – Fungal Research Trust spends < 5% on overheads 12 current applications for £2.1M needing funding The Fungal Research Trust stepping up a gear