Consortium to tackle neglected parasitic diseases with funding of €7.8m from EU

Published: 2-Apr-2014

Will develop drugs against parasite PDEs, a family of well-characterised enzymes


Five academic institutions, two governmental institutes and two leading SMEs from Europe, Africa and Latin America have joined a four-year, €7.8m project to develop drugs to treat neglected parasitic diseases (NPDs).

The PDE4NPD: PhosphoDiEsterase inhibitors for Neglected Parasitic Diseases project, led by VU University Amsterdam, aims to develop treatments for Chagas’ disease, human African trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis and schistosomiasis.

The project enables public and private partners to join forces within the EU Seventh Framework program to tackle these healthcare needs.

The consortium consists of VU University Amsterdam (NL), University of Glasgow (UK), University of Kent (UK), University of Antwerp (BE), The Spanish National Research Council (ES), Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (BR), Theodor Bilharz Research Institute (EG), European Screening Port (DE), IOTA Pharmaceuticals (UK) and Top Institute Pharma (NL) and combines various drug discovery approaches into one platform that is dedicated to developing drugs against parasite PDEs: a family of well-characterised enzymes.

Targeting parasite PDEs is a viable strategy to combat these diseases

'Previous studies have shown that PDEs are highly druggable and that targeting parasite PDEs is a viable strategy to combat these diseases,' said Principal Investigator Rob Leurs of VU University, as well-known drugs such as Viagra and Daxas effectively target illnesses caused by human PDEs.

'This consortium has all the expertise to develop parasite‐specific PDE inhibitors with high clinical potential. We will use state-of-the-art structural biology and screening technologies for finding new molecules with drug-like properties.'

In parallel, the consortium's parasitology research groups will perform phenotypic screening on various parasite species to identify agents that will kill them. The consortium will further develop compounds demonstrating anti-parasitic activity through PDEs as the key drug target.

'Ultimately, PDE4NPD will develop into a generic platform in which any parasite PDE can be enrolled,' added Leurs. 'The integrative approach allows the accumulation of fundamental knowledge with an efficiency that is typical for approaches that focus on a single cellular target.'

TI Pharma will support VU University Amsterdam in organising meetings, writing reports, tracking of project milestones and consolidation of project data. For the latter, the company will use its proprietary TI Plaza technology platform. The company will also build and maintain a public website for the project, handling press releases, and setting up a worldwide open innovation platform for NPDs.

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