The fight against deadly parasitic diseases affecting millions has been advanced by a COST Action, which has identified new drug candidates for malaria, Chagas and schistosomiasis. The network also provided researchers with industry-related training to boost their career prospects.
Parasitic diseases plague both people and animals in many parts of the world. While effective treatments have been found for some of them, scientists have struggled to develop drugs to battle others.
The COST Action ‘Targeted chemotherapy towards diseases caused by endoparasites’– completed in March 2018 after four years – has paved the way to discovering new treatments for such infections.
“The main impact of this COST Action is the selection of three drug candidates – one against malaria, another against South American trypanosomiasis, or Chagas disease, and another against schistosomiasis,” says Philippe Loiseau of the Université Paris-Saclay in France, who was the network’s chair.
“In the future, these discoveries could have considerable societal significance by potentially leading to novel treatments that could save the lives of many,” he adds.
Proposals for clinical trials of the three drug candidates could be submitted in one to two years, he says. Researchers are currently applying for funding to carry out evaluations on whether these candidates are toxic to living organisms, another key step in drug development.
Focus on future scientists
Two training schools launched by the Action brought together 31 PhD students, postdoctoral fellows and others to focus on practical aspects of their work on parasitic diseases – such as learning how to use new research technologies.
Some of their training supervisors were from start-ups and small companies, giving students exposure to industry research approaches. “The topics of the training schools were highly adapted to the activities of industry in drug research,” says Loiseau, adding this included applied and fundamental research.
The Action also enabled 28 students to go on short-term scientific missions of up to three months at participating labs. “This was very interesting because it stimulated collaboration between labs and social scientific production since some papers emerged,” Loiseau notes.
Both the lab exchanges and the training schools familiarised the young researchers with new industry techniques – opening up new opportunities for them in the private sector.
“When you produce PhD students, they should be able to find a job – and not only in the academic system because that is relatively limited,” Loiseau says.
The Action also resulted in ties between academia and the pharmaceutical industry, including companies such as GSK and Sanofi. The academic-industrial relationships fostered by the Action were developed through joint round tables held at four annual Action conferences.
Representatives from academia and industry participating in the round tables produced recommendations on topics such as anti-parasitic drug discovery and drug resistance. These have been submitted to national health ministries in Europe, the European Commission, the World Health Organization, NGOs and others.
Multi-disciplinary effort
Loiseau credits the Action’s success to its link-up of about 200 researchers from 27 European countries and many different backgrounds.
The Action participants are elaborating future collaborations around the One Health concept which recognises that human health is linked to animal health and the environment.
View the Action: https://www.cost.eu/actions/CM1307