Safe, effective and oral antiparasitics against protozoal infections

Background

Current antiprotozoal treatments are often ineffective, require a suboptimal compoundadministration route, face increasing resistance and are endowed with concerns about toxicity (direct and indirect). Therefore, novel treatment options are needed, to treat a large variety of protozoan-caused infections.

Protozoa are unable to synthesize purines de novo and rely solely on the uptake and interconversion from the host, constituting purine nucleoside analogues as a potential source of antiprotozoal agents.

Target market for turkeys

The incidence and severity of histomoniasis outbreaks in turkeys is increasing in the EU and US. Histomoniasis has a high morbidity and mortality in turkeys, sometimes approaching 100 % of a flock. In 2015, 233 million turkeys were raised in the US, resulting in approximately 5.7 billion dollars in revenu. The average turkey flock size is ~20,000 birds.

Whilst disease in chickens is less severe, they are a significant contributor to the spread H. meleagridis to other poultry including wild bird reservoirs. This disease represents a severe and ongoing animal health and welfare problem to the poultry population and therefore to a significant sector of the poultry industry.

There are currently no authorised medicines for treatment or prevention in the EU, whilst nitarsone is the only product approved by the FDA for the prevention of histomoniasis. The lack of any legal treatment for histomoniasis is of concern,  especially in the case of valuable turkey breeder candidate flocks.

Technology

We have prepared a purine nucleoside platform in the Laboratory for Medicinal Chemistry (Ghent University), based on known and novel sugar- and purine ring scaffolds. We have demonstrated their ability to act as antiprotozoal agents (primarily against trypanosomes, but also other).

Furthermore, nucleoside chemistry has already been extensively validated for its safety in antiviral indications in human medicine.

Partnering

We seek development and marketing partners interested in developing nucleoside analogues as anti-parasitic against protozoal infections.

We can offer a focused purine nucleoside library, containing >600 diverse nucleoside analogues in 96-well plate format for screening purposes.

Contact

Sven ARNOUTS

+32 495 707 334

Sven.Arnouts@UGent.be

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