Dr Manu De Rycker recognised with global honour
Dr Manu De Rycker, a Principal Investigator at WCAIR , has been named as the newest winner of the WH Pierce Global Impact in Microbiology Prize.
The honour acknowledges and celebrates individuals, teams, or organisations that have made ground breaking contributions to global challenges through applied microbiology. It forms part of the Applied Microbiology International Horizon Awards 2025, which celebrate the brightest minds in the field and promote the research, group, projects, products and individuals who continue to help shape the future of applied microbiology.
A Principal Investigator at the School of Life Sciences and Head of Biology at the University’s Drug Discovery Unit (DDU), Manu leads the kinetoplastid and antifungals drug discovery programmes at Dundee.
He and his team have enabled drug discovery for African sleeping sickness, visceral leishmaniasis and Chagas disease by developing a range of cell-based assays and screening cascades that allow high-throughput screening while also conferring the required physiological relevance. This work contributed to the development of two clinical candidates for visceral leishmaniasis and multiple advanced compounds for Chagas disease, all in collaboration with GSK. More recently Manu has set up a consortium to develop much-needed new antifungal drugs.
“It is a great honour to win the 2025 WH Pierce prize in recognition of our applied microbiology work for neglected tropical diseases,” Dr De Rycker said.
“Science is all about teamwork, and this prize really is a fantastic endorsement of the amazing work that my team, present and past, has been carrying out over the last 15 years. They are a brilliant group of dedicated scientists pushing hard to develop new treatments for some of the most neglected infectious diseases.
“I would like to thank them, the people that nominated me, and of course Applied Microbiology International. This award will further energise our efforts to tackle global challenges.”
Like many of the Applied Microbiology International Awards, the WH Pierce Prize is named after a distinguished individual who has been recognised by AMI for his outstanding contribution to the field of applied microbiology.
William (Bill) Henry Pierce was a long-standing member of Applied Microbiology International and former Chief Bacteriologist of Oxo Ltd, now part of the Thermo Fisher Scientific Group.
Throughout his lifetime, he made significant contributions to the improvement of bacterial culture media that are still used in a vast range of applications worldwide today. His work developing dehydrated extracts for making bacterial media culture had a significant impact on industry and made bacterial culture faster, more efficient and more reliable.
The prize is part of the Horizon Awards 2025 which are awarded by Applied Microbiology International (AMI) the oldest microbiology society in the UK and with more than half of its membership outside the UK, is truly global, serving microbiologists based in universities, private industry and research institutes around the world. AMI provides funding to encourage research and broad participation at its events and to ensure diverse voices are around the table working together to solve the sustainability development goals it has chosen to support.
AMI publishes leading industry magazine, The Microbiologist and in partnership with Oxford University Press, publishes three internationally acclaimed journals: Sustainable Microbiology, Journal of Applied Microbiology and Letters in Applied Microbiology. It gives a voice to applied microbiologists around the world, amplifying their collective influence and informing international, evidence-based, decision making.