A unique platform to identify new anthelmintic drugs affecting nematode metabolism.
Parasitic helminths like Ascaris, hookworm, and whipworm affect almost a quarter of the world’s population. Currently, while excellent drugs are available, resistance is rising — to tackle this we need new classes of drugs. We are trying to find these by targeting the unique metabolic pathways used by parasites when they are inside their hosts. C.elegans is the only model that uses these pathways and we have used our drug screening platform to establish clean assays for drugs that specifically target them. This project is extremely exciting — it combines high throughput drug screens with basic genetics and metabolomics to understand how parasites adapt to the anaerobic environment in their hosts and to identify key new generation therapies for this major global challenge. It’s rare to have the chance to affect the health of over a billion people and we have partnerships with academics, NGOs and pharma to drive this project.