Published 6 October 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4084
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4084

News

Charity and drug company work together to develop cure for Chagas’ disease

Bob Roehr

1 Washington, DC

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) has entered into an agreement with a drug company to develop the first new compound in nearly 40 years to treat Chagas’ disease. An estimated eight million people are infected with the parasite that causes the disease, Trypanosoma cruzi, a third of whom will die of heart or intestinal disease if left untreated.

Chagas’ disease is endemic in Latin American and Caribbean countries, and migration patterns have spread it worldwide. About 300 000 people in the United States are thought to be infected with it (BMJ 2009;339:b2859, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2859).

In an agreement with the Japanese company Eisai, DNDi, a collaboration formed in 2003 by seven organisations around the world, will assume full responsibility for clinical development of the compound E1224. This is a prodrug of the antifungal ravuconazole, which has shown potent activity against the infection in vitro and in . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Médecins Sans Frontières campaigns to increase treatment of Chagas disease
Peter Moszynski
BMJ 2009 339: b2859. [Extract] [Full Text]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ