Drug and vaccine development
Introduction
Drug-based research at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has centred on malaria, helminth and trypanosomatid infections. These parasitic diseases are a major cause of mortality and morbidity in parts of the world least able to deal with the associated economic burden. Our aim is to bring together LSHTM expertise in biology and disease control with UCL strengths in medical chemistry and pharmacology, to form a multidisciplinary grouping with enhanced potential to engage productively with industrial collaborators and product development partnerships. This combination will bring impetus and direction to the goal of developing new treatments for diseases that traditionally have not attracted significant commercial interest.
The treatments available for parasitic diseases in the developing world suffer from a variety of limitations and problems. In the case of malaria for example, resistance has arisen against all the current front line drugs. Similarly, treatment failures are often reported with nifurtimox and benznidazole, the only drugs available for Chagas disease (American trypanosomiasis), which is caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. The drugs used to treated parasitic diseases can also have serious side effects, which would be considered unacceptable in the treatment of infectious diseases in Europe or the USA. As an example, melarsoprol, the arsenical compound used against late stage sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis) is directly responsible for the deaths of 5-10% of patients. There is a clear and urgent need to extend the range of drugs available to treat these important infections, to develop treatments with fewer side effects, and to do so at a price that is compatible with the health budgets of some of the poorest countries in the world.
Drug and vaccine development case studies
A new generation of vaccines
Professor Brendan Wren's research at LSHTM focuses on the molecular ch...