Neglected Tropical Disease News and Research

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Elimination of Chagas disease by 2010

A new effort to eliminate Chagas disease by 2010 will be launched tomorrow at a WHO meeting of disease experts and partners.

3 Jul 2007

New targets for Leishmaniasis

A comparison of three parasite species that cause Leishmaniasis has identified a small number of genes, many new to biology, that will provide a framework to target the search for new treatments.

19 Jun 2007

New tests for leishmaniasis and leprosy

The Seattle-based Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) and Chembio Diagnostics, Inc. have entered into two research and development agreements for the development of rapid diagnostic tests for Leishmaniasis and Leprosy, two "neglected diseases" targeted by IDRI.

1 Jun 2007

Weill Cornell Medical College students help change global health policy

In a move to improve global public health, Weill Cornell Medical College students have helped place a lifesaving heart disease drug onto the World Health Organization's (WHO) list of essential medicines.

22 May 2007

Research into poverty-conditioned diseases

As part of a new funding initiative, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) is promoting projects in which German and African scientists carry out joint research on infectious diseases.

15 May 2007

India is poised to revolutionize biotechnology

India's health biotech firms are emerging as a major global player, with growing means and know-how to produce innovative as well as generic drugs and vaccines at costs small relative to those of giant Western firms, according to ground-breaking Canadian research.

10 Apr 2007

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