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Astellas, KEK sign NTDs collaborative research agreement

Astellas Pharma and The High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) have announced a collaborative research agreement to discover new drugs for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).

The collaboration will leverage synchrotron X-ray crystallography to design the pharmaceuticals based on the three-dimensional structure of proteins.

The research will primarily focus on infectious diseases caused by parasitic protozoans, namely leishmaniasis, Chagas disease and Sleeping sickness and will be divided into two major phases.

The first phase of the research will evaluate three-dimensional structure of parasitic protozoan proteins to find out the compounds that inhibit and block the action of pathogenic proteins.

The second phase of the research will conduct the structural analysis of target proteins in complex with the inhibitory compound. The crystallization robots and dedicated beamlines6 developed by KEK will be used in the procedure.

NTDs, prevalent mainly in poor remote rural areas, are infectious diseases spread by parasites or bacteria.