A pipeline of drugs for leishmaniasis and Chagas disease (360G-Wellcome-204672_Z_16_Z)

Visceral leishmaniasis and Chagas disease are neglected tropical diseases that cause substantial suffering and an estimated 60,000 deaths each year. Current medicines are inadequate – issues include limited efficacy and unacceptable toxicity. There is a need for new, effective and safe drugs to save lives and improve quality of life for people in low-income countries with these diseases. Our fully-integrated team, led by Professor Paul Wyatt, Dr Jose Fiandor and colleagues at the University of Dundee and at GSK has the substantial leadership, experience and infrastructure required to develop drug candidates suitable for clinical trials. We are already making substantial progress: we have identified two candidate drugs for visceral leishmaniasis and improved the methodology and systems to develop drugs for this and Chagas disease. But a greater pipeline of candidate drugs is required to ensure clinical success. Our goal over the next five years is to deliver at least two, potentially three, new drug candidates suitable for clinical trials for either of these diseases.