Wellcome Award to help counter 'Silent Killer' Disease

Experts at the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research (WCAIR) at the University of Dundee, a hub focused on drug discovery for neglected tropical diseases, are aiming to develop a new treatment for Chagas disease. Caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi and estimated to affect millions, this deadly disease and can survive for decades in the host before being detected.

邓迪生命科学学院转译寄生虫学主任Manu De Rycker博士说:“恰加斯病特别可怕，因为它生活在人体内，而受害者完全不知情。”“在被感染几十年后，很多人——大约30%——会继续发展成这种疾病，对心脏、食道和结肠造成危及生命的损害。这是对无声杀手的经典定义，一个人被感染的症状往往只是轻微的，类似于轻微的感冒或发烧，这意味着人们往往不理会它们。”

敦提大学的研究人员和他们在葛兰素史克公司的长期合作伙伴从威康信托基金获得了超过440万英镑的奖金，用于开发新的临床前药物候选，支持敦提大学的14个工作岗位。

Tim Miles, Portfolio Leader in Global Health at GSK, said, “This funding from the Wellcome Trust will enable the development of urgently needed medicines with the potential to offer shorter, simpler and safer treatment options for people living with Chagas disease. We are proud to partner with the University of Dundee in this effort to change the trajectory of Chagas’ disease and positively impact the health of millions of people.”

Once found solely within Central and South America, reports of Chagas disease in the UK are rare because of a lack of testing and general awareness, but there are likely to be thousands of cases in the country from those who have been infected elsewhere and subsequently migrated. it has slowly started to gain a foothold around the world due to large-scale population movements. It is spread by Triatomine bugs, which typically live in the walls or roofs of poorly constructed homes. During the night the parasites bite exposed areas of skin and defecating nearby, with the infection spread when the person unwittingly smears the faeces into the open wound, or their eyes or mouth. It can then subsequently be spread by blood transfusion and from mother to child.

“It is a very challenging problem from a drug discovery perspective as the parasites are intracellular, disseminate throughout the body and are difficult to kill,” said the University of Dundee’s Professor Kevin Read, co-leader of the project. “Chagas disease has the potential to affect many more millions of people in the years to come, so the urgent need to develop new treatments cannot be overstated.”

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