Diseases & Projects

Neglected tropical diseases continue to cause significant morbidity and mortality in the developing world. Yet, of the 1,556 new drugs approved between 1975 and 2004, only 21 (1.3%) were specifically developed for tropical diseases and tuberculosis, even though these diseases account for 11.4% of the global disease burden.

Diseases

Sleeping sickness or Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) is endemic in 36 African countries and around 60 million people are at risk of being infected. HAT is transmitted by the Tsetse fly and is fatal without treatment. Up to 2009, existing treatments for stage 2 of the disease were toxic or difficult to administer. In 2009, DNDi and its partners have launched the first new treatment for HAT in 25 years.		VL mainly affects populations in 70 countries across Asia, East Africa and South America. Worldwide around 350 million people are at risk. The parasite that leads to infection is called Leishmania and transmitted by sandflies. Existing treatments are difficult to administer, toxic, and costly. Drug resistance is also an increasing problem.
Chagas disease is endemic in 21 countries across Latin America and kills more people in the region than any other parasite-borne disease, including malaria. In total, 100 million people are at risk worldwide and patient numbers are growing in non-endemic countries such as the United States, Australia, and Europe. The disease is transmitted by an insect known as the “kissing bug” and without treatment, is potentially fatal. Existing treatments have an unsatisfactory cure rate and can have toxic side effects.		Malaria kills one child every 30 seconds in sub-Saharan Africa and is the leading parasitic cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. 3.2 billion people are at risk and while effective treatments exist, they have important limitations, including widespread drug resistance. DNDi and its partners have already developed two inexpensive, efficacious, field-adapted treatments.

Project Portfolio
DNDi’s R&D portfolio includes projects from the discovery to the post-registration phase. DNDi’s objective is to build a robust pipeline in order to deliver 6 to 8 new treatments by 2014. To date, DNDi and its partners made 3 new treatments available.