Machine Learning Models and Pathway Genome Data Base for Trypanosoma cruzi Drug Discovery published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases

Burlingame, Calif.—June 26, 2015—We are pleased to announce that the results of a phase I STTR collaborative study on Chagas Disease with groups at SRI International, UCSD, and UCSF have just been published (http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003878 ).

Chagas disease is a neglected tropical disease caused by the eukaryotic parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. We used a combination of cheminformatics, bioinformatics, in vitro and in vivo testing to identify molecules active at eliminating the parasites from infected cells. We found that the European Medicines Agency approved antimalarial drug pyronaridine possessed 85.2% efficacy (reduction in parasite burden compared to untreated control group after 4 days treatment) in the acute Chagas mouse model and may represent a repurposing opportunity.

This study also utilized the public T. cruzi datasets present in the CDD Vault^®. “This project demonstrates what can be achieved by combining complimentary approaches for Chagas Disease drug discovery and using CDD Vault for data management and collaboration between multi-disciplinary teams of researchers. We are excited by the promising in vivo data on pyronaridine as there is a shortage of drugs for this disease. Future studies on pyronaridine will likely evaluate its efficacy and safety in longer term animal models and identify the target or targets of this molecule. So while this is a great starting point, it is important to note that there is still a lot of work to be done before we can show clinical efficacy in humans” said Dr. Sean Ekins, CSO, CDD and Principal Investigator of this study.

About this grant

The work described was funded as a Phase 1 STTR grant from NIH NIAID (R41-AI108003-01 “Identification and validation of targets of phenotypic high throughput screening”). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences or the National Institutes of Health.

About Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.

CDD’s (www.collaborativedrug.com) flagship product, “CDD Vault”, is used to manage chemical registration, structure activity relationships (SAR), and securely scale collaborations. CDD Vault is a hosted database solution for secure management and sharing of biological and chemical data. It lets you intuitively organize chemical structures and biological study data, and collaborate with internal or external partners through an easy to use web interface. Recently developed products CDD Vision, CDD Models and CDD API compliment CDD Vault.

A complete list of the 58 publications from CDD can be found online on our resources page: https://www.collaborativedrug.com/pages/resources.

Media Contacts: Barry Bunin, PhD, Collaborative Drug Discovery, (650) 204-3084, info@collaborativedrug.com.