Tropical Diseases and Cure

Drug Discovery for NTDs & Infectious Diseases

There is a compelling scarcity of pharmaceutical agents for efficacious, safe, and affordable treatment of neglected infectious or tropical diseases despite their high prevalence in the developing world. The current challenges in effective management of neglected diseases being the toxicity of drugs, microbial resistance patterns, and long courses of treatments. Factually Drug discovery is a comprehensively risky, lengthy and complex process. Interpreting the discovery of a novel therapeutic target into a clinical candidate can take several years. The regular drug discovery process requires the synthesis and evaluation of thousands of compounds for activity testing against multiple numbers of targets and off-targets. Starting from early discovery experiments, followed by translational studies in various animal models and then to clinical trials, there appears to be something wrong in this translation. The drop out of molecules when moved through the development chain, despite showing very promising activities in the in vitro models is high. The burden of drug discovery and development has fallen extensively to academic scientists and researchers who are involved in so-called translational research. A few focused private-sector groups, and some public–private partnerships, such as Medicines for MalariaVenture along with Drugs for Neglected Disease Initiative and the Institute for One World Health, and many more getting collaborated to overcome the Neglected Tropical Diseases.

The developing world suffers the major burden of infectious disease, yet the range of drugs available for the treatment of many infectious diseases is limited. Moreover, some currently available drugs are difficult to access or administer in developing country settings, while others remain unaffordable at the patient or health facility level; meanwhile, there is increasing resistance to some drugs. Many new public-private partnerships are developing new drugs for the diseases of poverty and they need new leads to work from.