A team of scientists from industry, academia, and the nonprofit sector are collaborating to find new treatments for African sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis, two neglected tropical diseases that kill total of 100,000 people each year. The consortium, with is starting out with 5 million dollar to be distributed over the course of four years, includes IOTA Pharmaceuticals, Mercachem, Nycomed, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, the Royal Tropical Institute, the University of Bern, VU University Amsterdam, and TI Pharma. The group aims to find and develop new drug candidates that block parasite-specifica phosphodiesterese, witch plays a role in cell proliferantion and death. Ver PDF
