Communication of LNBio, 9th March 2015

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International consortium for the development of new drugs against Chagas disease, leishmaniasis and sleeping sickness will meet for the first time in Brazil. Representatives of research institutes and biotech companies from nine countries will be in Campinas – SP to discuss the progress of the New Medicines for Trypanosomatidic Infections (NMTryI) Project, funded by the European Union through the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) (www.nmtrypi.eu). The researchers will also participate in a symposium, which will cover opportunities for partnerships between Brazilian and European institutions. Both events will take place from 8^th to 10^th April at the Brazilian National Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM) campus.

With EUR 7.6 million budget, the major objective of this 3-year project is to optimize molecules with anti-trypanosome activity to promote the development of more effective drugs against Chagas disease, leishmaniasis and sleeping sickness, also known as Human African trypanosomiasis. These diseases affect especially communities from developing countries and their therapies is still based on old drugs with resistance and toxicity problems. For the development of the new medicines, the consortium, invests in an interdisciplinary approach and in collaborations between entities from Italy, Germany, Portugal, England, Greece, Spain Belgium, Sudan and Brazil.

The Brazilian Biosciences National Laboratory (LNBio), a part of CNPEM, represents Brazil in this initiative. The LNBio is responsible for testing the drug candidates through the high throughput screening (HTS) method – an automated technique used to identify compounds that can kill the parasites and lead to disease cure. “We are testing approximately 15,000 substances in cellular assays for Chagas disease, leishmaniasis and sleeping sickness, totaling more than 50,000 screening points”, explains Carolina Borsoi Moraes, LNBio researcher and specialist on screening for neglected diseases.

“The NMTrypI Project will leverage an amount of EUR 365 000 to the LNBio´s Chemical Biology and Screening Platform, an investment that will benefit the national process of drug discovery and development, through training and acquisition of equipment”, says Lucio Freitas-Junior, LNBio researcher responsible for the Brazilian participation in the consortium.

Symposium: Opportunities for Interaction

To disseminate the multinational model of consortium and to present opportunities for interaction between Brazilian and European groups, mainly in the area of neglected diseases, the symposium “Building International Consortia on parasitic diseases: the NMtrypl experience” will be held on April 10th at the CNPEM campus. The event is open to the scientific community and there is no registration fee. “The European Commission supports this type of partnership to improve collaboration between different research groups, stimulating scientific collaborations, growth of Science, networking and economy at the international level” explains Maria Paola Costi, Coordinator of NMTrypI Project and researcher at the University of Reggio Emilia and Modena in Italy. More information about the symposium is available on http://pages.cnpem.br/nmtrypi/.