The Hindu Business Line : Advinus, DNDi tie up for kala azar drug

Bangalore, Oct. 11 Advinus Therapeutics (P) Ltd said it has tied up with Geneva-based Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) to discover and develop novel therapies for ‘kala azar’, a fatal and infectious tropical disease.

The collaboration is initially for five years; this is the first such collaboration in the country for the deadly visceral leishmaniasis, Advinus, a Tata group-promoted drug R&D and custom research entity, said in a release.

Dr Rashmi Barbhaiya, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Advinus, said India was one of the few countries that has the disease burden and the R&D capability to develop new therapies for such neglected diseases.

Advinus, with a discovery unit in Pune and a development platform in Bangalore, caters to drug discovery and development needs of pharma and agrochemical companies.

“The collaboration brings together expertise in chemistry, biology, screening, and pre-formulation and will help to strengthen capacity in VL-endemic countries through training and networking. The goal of the project is to progress molecules proven to be safe and active against VL parasites in early stage screening research through the first steps of regulatory safety assessment in the preclinical phase.”

According to Dr Bernard Pecoul of the not-for-profit DNDi, the partnership provides a critical catalyst in the development of drugs to treat VL and should be a model for future drug development for neglected diseases.

DNDi, an independent, not-for-profit organisation, has 18 projects including malaria, kala azar, human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) and Chagas disease that afflict the Third World poor.

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