TI Pharma in €7.8M Consortium Tackling Neglected Parasitic Diseases

Five academic institutions, two governmental institutes and two leading SMEs from Europe, Africa and Latin America are joining forces to develop novel drugs against parasites. The 4-year EU-funded project led by VU University Amsterdam is called PDE4NPD: PhosphoDiEsterase inhibitors for Neglected Parasitic Diseases, areas of study that often have devastating effects on human and veterinary health, but attract low investment.

The NPDs addressed in this project – Chagas’ disease, human African trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis and schistosomiasis – collectively result in 6.6 million disability-adjusted life years. During the last 30 years, only 9 new drugs targeting these NPDs have come to market; with lack of sufficient financial incentive and  low return on investment perspective for the pharmaceutical industry, it was suggested that a paradigm shift in policy and a substantial joint effort to address this drug discovery gap is urgently required.

The PDE4NPD 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.

TI Pharma is involved in two Workpackages: WP1 (management) in which it will support VU in organising meetings, writing reports, tracking of project milestones and consolidation of project data;  and WP8, where it will lead communication and dissemination of the project.