Eisai signs tropical disease deal
pharmafile | November 12, 2013 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Disease, Eisai, Japan, broad, ntd, tropical
Eisai has become the latest pharma firm to partner with the US-based Broad Institute to pool expertise and come up with new treatments for various conditions by investigating compounds from Broad’s chemical library.
The Japanese company is partnering with Broad, which is affiliated to US academic powerhouses Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an attempt to develop new therapies to treat neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and tuberculosis.
It is the most recent in a line of drug discovery initiatives from the institute, which in the past year or so has signed up with Bayer HealthCare to find new oncology treatments and with AstraZeneca to speed up research into antibacterial and antiviral drugs.
The first project in the Eisai and Broad venture will aim to create a novel treatment for Chagas disease, which kills 14,000 people in Latin America each year and is transmitted by the so-called ‘assassin bug’ or vinchuca.
Around eight million people are thought to be carriers of the disease, with 100 million people estimated to be living in endemic areas – and the new programme has been given a partial funding grant by the non-profit Global Health Innovative Technology Fund.
A partnership between the Japanese government, pharma companies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, its purpose is to help fight infectious diseases of the developing world, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and NTDs.
Eisai is also working on NTDs with organisations such as the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Brazil’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.
There is certainly a significant need: the World Health Organisation (WHO) says that NTDs are a severe problem for more than one billion of the poorest 2.4 billion people in the world, and are endemic in nearly 150 countries.
As well as Chagas, NTDs designated by WHO for eradication also include Buruli ulcer, dengue, dracunculiasis (guinea-worm disease), human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), leprosy, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis (river blindness), rabies and schistosomiasis.
Broad was launched in 2004 as a non-profit biomedical research facility and has collaborations with more than 100 private firms and public bodies in 40 countries.
Adam Hill
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