Neglected Tropical Disease News and Research

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Bold proposal to restructure drug development patents

Weill Cornell Medical College scientist Dr. Carl Nathan has issued a bold call for reforming the pharmaceutical development and patent systems in order to increase the number of vaccines and drugs available to combat neglected diseases that are ravaging the world's poor.

8 Mar 2007

World's largest particle physics accelerator tackles malaria

Malaria kills more than one million people each year, most of them young children living in Africa. Now physicists in the UK have shared their computers with biologists from countries including France and Korea in an effort to combat the disease.

31 Jan 2007

Yaws disease re-emerging

Yaws, a disease which eats away at the skin, cartilage and bones of its victims (mostly children), is re- emerging in poor, rural and marginalized populations of Africa, Asia and South America.

28 Jan 2007

Race to accelerate tuberculosis drug development

Each year, tuberculosis kills nearly two million people while an estimated nine million develop the disease -- with the hardest-hit areas in AIDS-afflicted developing nations.

14 Jan 2007

Diagnostics for tuberculosis: Global demand and market potential

A significant and largely untapped global market exists for more effective and affordable tests to diagnose tuberculosis in low and middle income countries, where most TB cases today occur.

26 Oct 2006

WHO unveils new strategy to fight some of the most neglected tropical diseases

The World Health Organization (WHO) and a group of more than 25 partner organizations unveiled a new strategy to fight some of the most neglected tropical diseases that destroy the lives and health of poor people.

26 Oct 2006

Bill Gates puts hand in pocket and gives $70 million for research into tropical diseases

Bill Gates has once again put his money where his mouth is by donating almost U.S$70 million for research into fighting tropical diseases in the 'third world'.

18 Sep 2006

The new landscape of neglected disease drug development

A recent report shows that drug development for killer diseases such as HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria, Chagas and Sleeping Sickness has increased in recent years.

1 Sep 2006

Chagas' disease needs more research attention

The international research community needs to focus more attention on Chagas' disease - an infectious disease that kills 50,000 people a year, states an Editorial in this week's special cardiology issue of The Lancet.

17 Aug 2006

Genomic expansion and diversification in a African sleeping sickness parasite allow it to evade host detection

A team of scientists headed by Dr. Sara Melville at the University of Cambridge has shown that the parasite known to cause African sleeping sickness has evolved an unusual chromosomal structure as a result of environmental adaptation.

3 Aug 2006

Controlling neglected diseases will boost fight against HIV, TB and Malaria

Achieving success in the global fight against the "big three" diseases - HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which together account for 5.6 million deaths a year - may well require a concurrent attack on the world’s most neglected tropical diseases, says a team of researchers in the international open access journal PLoS Medicine.

2 Feb 2006

New strategies to help developing countries address neglected diseases

For the health challenges facing developing countries, the numbers alone are staggering. Every day, 40,000 people - enough to fill a sports stadium - die from preventable infectious diseases and malnutrition. Entire generations of human potential are perishing.

25 Oct 2005

Wellcome Trust awards £8.1 million to tackle tropical diseases

The Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest medical charities, has awarded £8.1 million over 5 years to a team of six scientists at the University of Dundee to help discover new drugs to treat some of the world’s most neglected tropical diseases.

25 Oct 2005

Tropical diseases such as sleeping sickness, schistosomiasis, river blindness, hookworm, elephantiasis, and blinding trachoma are being ignored

"The big three" infections AIDS, TB and malaria have caught the world's attention but other disabling and fatal infectious diseases in Africa are being ignored, say three eminent tropical disease researchers in the international health journal PLoS Medicine.

11 Oct 2005

A breakthrough in R&D for neglected diseases

A dramatic sea-change in research into ten so-called "neglected diseases," such as malaria, leprosy and sleeping sickness, could result in at least eight new drugs being developed by 2010.

12 Sep 2005

Compound might defeat African sleeping

One of the most devastating diseases in sub-Saharan Africa almost disappeared in the late 1950s.

26 Aug 2005

Genome studies may help target new drugs to fight them

One parasite causes a deadly sleeping sickness in Africa. The second damages the internal organs of millions of Latin Americans. The third causes terrible lesions on the face or limbs of victims from Brazil to India.

18 Jul 2005

Bill Gates calls on world leaders to seize opportunity to improve health

In a major address today to international health officials, Bill Gates said the world now has a "historic chance" to achieve dramatic improvements in health, and called on governments, the scientific community, and the private sector to more aggressively fight the diseases that affect hundreds of millions of the world's poorest people each year.

16 May 2005

International coalition works to develop a cocktail of drugs to combat Malaria

As Africa marks its own Malaria Day in recognition of the fact that it bears 90% of the deadly disease’s burden, an international research coalition is working to develop a cocktail of drugs that overcomes increasing resistance to conventional treatment exhibited by the elusive parasite.

27 Apr 2005

Why different tissues in the human body vary in their susceptibility to "amyloid" diseases

Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute are reporting the results of a recent study that addresses why different tissues in the human body vary in their susceptibility to "amyloid" diseases, which include Alzheimer's disease and a cluster of ailments called the familial amyloidoses.

7 Apr 2005