• DNDi-20_Logo_No-Tagline_EN_Full Colour
  • Our work
    • Diseases
      • Sleeping sickness
      • Visceral leishmaniasis
      • Cutaneous leishmaniasis
      • Chagas disease
      • Filaria: river blindness
      • Mycetoma
      • Paediatric HIV
      • Cryptococcal meningitis
      • Hepatitis C
      • Dengue
      • COVID-19
      • Antimicrobial resistance
    • Research & development
      • R&D portfolio & list of projects
      • Drug discovery
      • Translational research
      • Clinical trials
      • Registration & access
      • Treatments delivered
    • Advocacy
      • Open and collaborative R&D
      • Transparency of R&D costs
      • Pro-access policies
  • Networks & partners
    • Partnerships
      • Our partners
      • Partnering with us
    • Global networks
      • Chagas Platform
      • HAT Platform
      • HELP Helminth Elimination Platform
      • LEAP Platform
      • redeLEISH Network
    • DNDi worldwide
      • DNDi Switzerland
      • DNDi DRC
      • DNDi Eastern Africa
      • DNDi Japan
      • DNDi Latin America
      • DNDi North America
      • DNDi South Asia/India
      • DNDi South-East Asia
      • DNDi Southern Africa
  • News & resources
    • News & stories
      • News
      • Stories
      • Statements
      • Viewpoints
      • Social media
      • eNews Newsletter
    • Press
      • Press releases
      • In the media
    • Resources
      • Scientific articles
      • Our publications
      • Videos
    • Events
  • About us
    • About
      • Who we are
      • How we work
      • Our strategy
      • Our donors
      • Annual reports
    • Our people
      • Our leadership
      • Our governance
      • Contact us
    • Work with us
      • Working at DNDi
      • Job opportunities
      • Requests for proposal
  • Donate
  • DNDi-20_Logo_No-Tagline_EN_Full Colour
  • Our work
    • Diseases
      • Sleeping sickness
      • Visceral leishmaniasis
      • Cutaneous leishmaniasis
      • Chagas disease
      • Filaria: river blindness
      • Mycetoma
      • Paediatric HIV
      • Cryptococcal meningitis
      • Hepatitis C
      • Dengue
      • COVID-19
      • Antimicrobial resistance
    • Research & development
      • R&D portfolio & list of projects
      • Drug discovery
      • Translational research
      • Clinical trials
      • Registration & access
      • Treatments delivered
    • Advocacy
      • Open and collaborative R&D
      • Transparency of R&D costs
      • Pro-access policies
  • Networks & partners
    • Partnerships
      • Our partners
      • Partnering with us
    • Global networks
      • Chagas Platform
      • HAT Platform
      • HELP Helminth Elimination Platform
      • LEAP Platform
      • redeLEISH Network
    • DNDi worldwide
      • DNDi Switzerland
      • DNDi DRC
      • DNDi Eastern Africa
      • DNDi Japan
      • DNDi Latin America
      • DNDi North America
      • DNDi South Asia/India
      • DNDi South-East Asia
      • DNDi Southern Africa
  • News & resources
    • News & stories
      • News
      • Stories
      • Statements
      • Viewpoints
      • Social media
      • eNews Newsletter
    • Press
      • Press releases
      • In the media
    • Resources
      • Scientific articles
      • Our publications
      • Videos
    • Events
  • About us
    • About
      • Who we are
      • How we work
      • Our strategy
      • Our donors
      • Annual reports
    • Our people
      • Our leadership
      • Our governance
      • Contact us
    • Work with us
      • Working at DNDi
      • Job opportunities
      • Requests for proposal
  • Donate
Home > Press releases

DNDi and four pharmaceutical companies announce ‘Drug Discovery Booster’ experiment to accelerate and expand discovery of new drugs for two highly neglected diseases – leishmaniasis and Chagas disease

Geneva, Switzerland / Osaka and Tokyo, Japan / London, United Kingdom — 28 May 2015
Share on twitter
Share on facebook
Share on linkedin
Share on email
Share on print

First multi-company engagement in project with DNDi to tackle neglected tropical diseases, supported by the Japanese Global Health Innovative Technology Fund
The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and four pharmaceutical firms, Eisai Co Ltd, Shionogi & Co Ltd, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, and AstraZeneca plc have announced the start of a ground-breaking initiative to accelerate and cut the cost of early stage drug discovery for two of the world’s most neglected diseases, leishmaniasis and Chagas disease. The ‘Neglected Tropical Diseases Drug Discovery Booster’ consortium, through a carefully engineered modus operandi, will circumvent early stage commercial barriers between the four pharmaceutical participants, allowing DNDi, for the first time, to search millions of unique compounds simultaneously, in the hunt for new treatment leads for leishmaniasis and Chagas disease.

‘This experimental approach to radically modernize drug development for neglected diseases is the result of a decade of growing partnerships with pharmaceutical companies’
, said Dr Bernard Pécoul, Executive Director of DNDi. ‘This experiment could significantly reduce the time and money it takes to find new, promising treatment leads, and echoes the great potential of innovative research and development collaborations.’

Traditionally, early stage drug discovery to find new treatments has been an expensive and time-consuming process. To identify promising new compounds for neglected diseases, DNDi has worked bilaterally with a range of pharmaceutical partners, searching through segments of their vast compound libraries, and testing them against infected cells. The Drug Discovery Booster is a new approach, using a multilateral, simultaneous search process across participating companies, thus allowing DNDi access to compounds generated over many decades of research. State-of-the-art technology will be used to pinpoint compounds that have promising characteristics for further testing.

The innovation of the Drug Discovery Booster not only lies in the multilateral approach, but also in the iterative nature of the search, meaning companies will continually examine their libraries for better matches as the search is refined. The Drug Discovery Booster has the potential to cut up to two years from the early drug discovery process, which takes approximately five years or more, and improve cost-efficiency across research activities.

The new process starts with DNDi providing all four companies with a common chemical starting point, the ‘seed’ compound. This compound will have shown promising results against Leishmania or Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasites that cause leishmaniasis and Chagas disease, but may not yet be optimal for use as a future treatment. The four companies will then search their own full collections of high-quality chemical compounds for similar and potentially better molecules, and will select and send the most promising to DNDi, which will then have them screened for potential effectiveness against these two deadly parasitic diseases. The aim is to continually improve the effectiveness of the compounds.

DNDi will then select the best ‘hits’ for further testing. This process will be repeated up to three times, with each new iteration – or round – starting from an improved seed compound identified from within one of the four partner’s collections and shared with all. The initial project goal is to explore the consortium’s compound libraries for at least four promising seed compounds for each disease. It is expected that at least two of the resulting novel series of compounds will move to the next stage of development towards a new medicine.

Any progress or successful new treatment for leishmaniasis or Chagas disease resulting from the Drug Discovery Booster will be attributed to the collective effort of all partners, which have also agreed that no intellectual property barriers will be imposed to a new treatment if successful.

The GHIT Fund, launched in 2013, stimulates and supports such international global health research and development partnerships. Through a grant of EUR 640,000 or 79.5 million Japanese Yen provided to DNDi, GHIT will support the involvement of the three Japanese companies in this project. The remainder of the project, including the involvement of AstraZeneca plc, is being supported by DNDi core funds.

‘The Drug Discovery Booster could be a game-changing milestone in the fight against diseases that destroy the health and livelihoods of the world’s poorest’, said Dr BT Slingsby, GHIT Fund CEO. ‘Industry’s innovative leadership for the most neglected of the neglected diseases will be essential to accelerate progress toward creating life-saving medicines, and GHIT is proud to support the important contribution of Japanese pharmaceutical companies to make this possible.’

***

Additional quotes from Drug Discovery Booster consortium partners

Eisai Co., Ltd

‘The consortium announced today marks a new step forward in our challenge to combat neglected diseases. As a human healthcare company addressing unmet medical needs around the world, Eisai is proud to join this consortium that will combine resources and expertise from partners to develop new treatments for leishmaniasis and Chagas disease, two significant global health issues affecting over 18 million people worldwide.’ Haruo Naito, Representative Corporate Officer and CEO Eisai Co., Ltd

Shionogi & Co Ltd
‘Based on our strong partnership with DNDi, Shionogi is leveraging its experience and strengths in theinfectious disease field to deliver new drugs to patients who arestruggling against leishmaniasis and Chagas Disease as soon as possible. This is part of our wider missionas a pharmaceutical company to contribute to the health ofpeople in developing countries and around the world.’ Dr Isao Teshirogi, President & CEO of Shionogi & Co Ltd

Takeda Pharmaceutical  Company Limited
‘We are pleased to join this consortium with support through the GHIT Fundand to contribute to global health through utilizing our proprietary compound library for drug discovery that might lead to improve access to medicine and provide meaningful solutions for the treatment of neglected tropical diseases.’ Yasuchika Hasegawa, the Representative Director, Chairman of the Board of Takeda

AstraZeneca plc
‘We are delighted to be working in partnership with DNDi, Eisai, Shionogi and Takeda to advance the development of new medicines for the treatment of Chagas disease and leishmaniasis. AstraZeneca is committed to establishing open innovation partnerships with charity, academic and industry partners to push the boundaries of science to benefit patients worldwide.’ Dr Garry Pairaudeau, Head of External Sciences at AstraZeneca

About the Drug Discovery Booster Consortium Partners

Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi)
A not-for-profit research and development organization, DNDi works to deliver new treatments for neglected diseases, in particular leishmaniasis, human African trypanosomiasis, Chagas disease, malaria, specific filarial infections, and paediatric HIV. Since its inception in 2003, DNDi has delivered six treatments: two fixed-dose antimalarials (ASAQ and ASMQ), nifurtimox-eflornithine combination therapy (NECT) for late-stage sleeping sickness, sodium stibogluconate and paromomycin (SSG&PM) combination therapy for visceral leishmaniasis in Africa, a set of combination therapies for visceral leishmaniasis in Asia, and a paediatric dosage form of benznidazole for Chagas disease. In addition, DNDi has established regional disease-specific platforms, which bring together partners in disease-endemic countries to strengthen existing clinical research capacity, as well as to build new capacity where necessary. www.dndi.org

Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (GHIT Fund)
The Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (GHIT Fund), a public-private partnership between six Japanese pharmaceutical companies, the Japanese Government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will support the three Japanese companies contributing to the Booster through a grant of €640,000 or 79.5 million Japanese Yen. The first of its kind in Japan, GHIT taps R&D to fight neglected diseases, mobilizing Japanese pharmaceutical companies and academic research organizations to engage in the effort to get new medicines and vaccines to people who need them most, with Japan quickly becoming a game-changer in global health. The booster complements GHIT’s ongoing investments into new tools to tackle Chagas disease and leishmaniasis, now totalling ¥1,131,760,559 ($1USD = ¥100).

Eisai Co., Ltd
Eisai Co., Ltd is a leading global research and development-based pharmaceutical company headquartered in Japan. We define our corporate mission as “giving first thought to patients and their families and to increasing the benefits health care provides,” which we call our human health care (hhc) philosophy. With over 10,000 employees working across our global network of R&D facilities, manufacturing sites and marketing subsidiaries, we strive to realize our hhc philosophy by delivering innovative products in various therapeutic areas with high unmet medical needs, including Oncology and Neurology.  As a global pharmaceutical company, our mission extends to patients around the world through our investment and participation in partnership-based initiatives to improve access to medicines in developing and emerging countries.  For more information about Eisai Co., Ltd., please visit www.eisai.com.

Shionogi & Co., Ltd.
Shionogi & Co., Ltd. is a major research-driven pharmaceutical company dedicated to placing the highest value on patients. Shionogi’s research and development currently targets two therapeutic areas: infectious diseases, and pain/CNS disorders. In addition, Shionogi is engaged in new research areas such as obesity/geriatric metabolic disease and oncology/immunology.  Contributing to the health of patients around the world through development in these therapeutic areas is Shionogi’s primary goal. For more details, please visit www.shionogi.co.jp.

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited
Located in Osaka, Japan, Takeda is a research-based global company with its main focus on pharmaceuticals. As the largest pharmaceutical company in Japan and one of the global leaders of the industry, Takeda is committed to strive towards better health for people worldwide through leading innovation in medicine. Additional information about Takeda is available through its corporate website, www.takeda.com.

AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca is a global, innovation-driven biopharmaceutical business that focuses on the Discovery, development and commercialization of prescription medicines, primarily for the treatment of cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, inflammation, autoimmune, oncology, infection and neuroscience diseases. AstraZeneca operates in over 100 countries and its innovative medicines are used by millions of patients worldwide. For more information, please visit: www.astrazeneca.com.

Media Contacts
Sian Bowen, DNDi Communications Manager (Geneva) + 41 79 932 4268
Ilan Moss, DNDi Communications Manager (New York) +1 646 266 5216

More information
Watch video about the NTD Drug Discovery Booster
Learn more about the NTD Drug Discovery Booster

Partnership Chagas disease Cutaneous leishmaniasis Visceral leishmaniasis

Read, watch, share

Loading...
Young man sitting in hospital setting
News
25 Jan 2023

It’s time medical innovation reached the 1.7 billion people affected by neglected tropical diseases: World NTD Day 2023

Film Poster Voices of Leishmaniasis: Shushi from India
Videos
25 Jan 2023

Voices of leishmaniasis: Shishu from India

Child receiving treatment
News
20 Jan 2023

DNDi’s 20th year of bringing the best science for the most neglected

Child affected by dengue and her mother at their home in Bangkok, Thailand.
Stories
16 Dec 2022

2022: Six advances in neglected disease research to remember

Statements
2 Dec 2022

DNDi‘s comments on the conceptual zero draft for the consideration of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body at INB3

Healthcare workers discussing in hospital setting
Press releases
1 Dec 2022

DNDi partners in a new NIHR-funded Global Health Research Group on HIV-associated Fungal Infections (IMPRINT)

Healthcare workers looking into microscopes
Press releases
30 Nov 2022

Acoziborole: Investigational single-dose oral treatment raises hope for elimination of sleeping sickness in Africa

Journalists talking with healthcare workers
News
23 Nov 2022

DNDi media workshops – bringing together reporters and researchers to cover neglected disease research

VIEW ALL

Help neglected patients

To date, we have delivered twelve new treatments, saving millions of lives.

Our goal is to deliver 25 new treatments in our first 25 years. You can help us get there. 

GIVE NOW
Facebook-f
Twitter
Instagram
Linkedin-in
Youtube
International non-profit developing safe, effective, and affordable treatments for the most neglected patients.

Learn more

  • Diseases
  • Neglected tropical diseases
  • R&D portfolio
  • Policy advocacy

Get in touch

  • Our offices
  • Contact us
  • Integrity Line

Support us

  • Donate
  • Subscribe to eNews

Work with us

  • Join research networks
  • Jobs
  • RFPs
  • Terms of Use   
  •   Acceptable Use Policy   
  •   Privacy Policy   
  •   Cookie Policy   
  •   Our policies   

  • Except for images, films and trademarks which are subject to DNDi’s Terms of Use, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Switzerland License   
We use cookies to track our audience and improve our content. By clicking 'Accept All', you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Click on 'Customize' to accept only some cookies.
Customize
ACCEPT ALL
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement1 yearSet by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category .
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
CookieLawInfoConsent1 yearRecords the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie.
PHPSESSIDsessionThis cookie is native to PHP applications. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed.
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
CookieDurationDescription
elementorneverThis cookie is used by the website's WordPress theme. It allows the website owner to implement or change the website's content in real-time.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
CookieDurationDescription
_ga2 yearsThe _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors.
_ga_16Q5RH3XRG2 yearsThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics.
_gat_UA-10302561-11 minuteA variation of the _gat cookie set by Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to allow website owners to track visitor behaviour and measure site performance. The pattern element in the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to.
_gid1 dayInstalled by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously.
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress30 minutesHotjar sets this cookie to detect the first pageview session of a user. This is a True/False flag set by the cookie.
_hjFirstSeen30 minutesHotjar sets this cookie to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether it was the first time Hotjar saw this user.
_hjIncludedInPageviewSample2 minutesHotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit.
_hjIncludedInSessionSample2 minutesHotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit.
_hjSession_112884430 minutesHotjar sets this cookie.
_hjSessionUser_11288441 yearHotjar sets this cookie.
CONSENT2 yearsYouTube sets this cookie via embedded youtube-videos and registers anonymous statistical data.
Targeting
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
SAVE & ACCEPT
Powered by CookieYes Logo