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UCSD steps up fight against tropical parasitical diseases

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Despite modern medicine’s amazing feats, a large part of humanity has been left behind. Hundreds of millions of people around the world remain at risk from parasitical tropical diseases.

These crippling and even fatal diseases include African sleeping sickness, a brain-eating amoeba, hookworm, roundworms that infiltrate the lymphatic system, and malaria.

Now UC San Diego has opened a center to combat these neglected tropical diseases.

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The Center for Anti-Parasitic Drug Discovery and Development draws together faculty with expertise in pharmaceutical science, molecular biology and clinical testing. It can take drugs all the way from first concept to readiness for actual clinical testing.

The center is part of UCSD’s mission as a non-profit public institution, said Dr. James McKerrow, dean of UCSD’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. McKerrow, a pathologist, specializes in these diseases.

“They’re major global health problems,” McKerrow said. “We’re talking about diseases which I think would shock most people, in terms of how many folks have these diseases worldwide.”

“Unfortunately, they’re diseases primarily in poor regions of the world, and they’re not economically viable for any company to go after.”

The new center grew out of the Center for Discovery and Innovation in Parasitic Diseases. And it addresses a point of criticism of UCSD, that while it does excellent disease research, it hasn’t stepped in as much as it might to help fight these global health problems.

In 2015, the university received a grade of C+ for its efforts in this area from the Universities Allied for Essential Medicines. The university said at the time it would devote more people and money to this problem.

That expanded effort has begun to take shape. UCSD is already testing an old rheumatoid arthritis drug in Bangladesh for two parasitic disease of the intestine, amebiasis and giardiasis.

The advantage of repurposing existing drugs is that they’ve already been tested in people and proven safe.

The new center has 15 faculty members from several departments, including the Skaggs School, the School of Medicine, Division of Biological Sciences and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, or SIO.

It’s this breadth of expertise at UCSD that allows work to proceed from start to finish, McKerrow said. For example, SIO brings expertise in studying potential drugs collected from marine creatures.

“It’s a whole pipeline from basic research on the organisms that cause these diseases through drug development,” he said. “This requires that you make sure that (the drug) can be given by mouth, that it’s absorbed and that it’s safe.”

When that’s done, UCSD’s Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute brings in the expertise to actually test these drugs in people. So a drug can go from initial concept to approved therapy, based on the university’s resources.

“We’ve managed to cobble together funding from various sources to take at least a couple of things as far as the clinic,” he said. “There’s no other place in the world that can do the whole thing,” McKerrow said.

The university cultures some of these dangerous parasites to study them. These include a species of a brain-eating amoeba that can legally be grown in animal models at only two places in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and UCSD.

At the end of this process, when actual approved drugs emerge, non-profits such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have shown willingness to pay for distributing these drugs, McKerrow said.

For example, the Gates Foundation has paid for distribution of expensive HIV drugs into impoverished countries that need them.

Related reading

UCSD gets poor grade in global health

Center for Discovery and Innovation in Parasitic Diseases

Gates Foundation boosts UCSD-led malaria research

DARPA funds UC gene drive research against mosquito-borne diseases

Reality bites: War against malaria rages on

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bradley.fikes@sduniontribune.com

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