Discussion

Elimination of Neglected Parasitic Diseases (NPDs) requires new drugs and therapeutic approaches to circumvent problems with current treatments, including drug resistance, severe side-effects, and exacting dosing schedules. However, the high risk and low potential return on drugs for NPDs inhibits investment in early stage NPD drug discovery by most established pharmaceutical and large biotech companies. At the same time, the investment of time and money needed to turn an optimized hit or drug lead into a drug candidate is realistically beyond the scope of most academic groups. The formation of "consortia" and/or "public-private partnerships (PPPs)" are ways of addressing these issues for poorly funded neglected diseases. To address this situation for the NPDs, 4 EC consortia (NMTrypI, KINDReD, A-ParaDDisE and PDE4NPD), involving more than 50 teams in Europe, Africa, South America, Australia and the USA, were funded in a specific EC Call related to drug development in neglected infectious diseases (HEALTH.2013.2.3.4-2: Drug development for neglected parasitic diseases. FP7-HEALTH-2013-INNOVATION-1). The consortia targeted the trypanosomatid diseases Leishmaniasis, Chagas Disease, and Sleeping Sickness, as well as Schistosomiasis and Malaria. Further details about the consortia can be found on their respective websites. All 4 EC Projects focused on two main objectives: 1) establishing drug discovery platforms with the capacity to undertake the routine screening of available compound libraries, and drive hit-to-lead development; and 2) developing robust anti-parasitic drug testing capabilities in relevant animal models, in order to determine the efficacy, toxicity and safety of specific drug candidates The drug candidates produced by the 4 consortia will be compared and contrasted, and the role of SMEs in expediting the delivery of such candidates will be discussed. We will also review the lessons to be learned from this initiative about consortium structure and productivity, and provide some thoughts on how follow-on NPD drug discovery platforms - both national and international - might be structured for optimum performance.