GBP18M for neglected disease group to provide new drugs

The UK government has agreed to donate GBP18.0 million ($27.2 million) to the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) to pay for two new  products against African trypanosomiasis, also known as sleeping  sickness. Existing remedies have a high incidence of fatal side effects  or require an intensive course of treatment that is not sustainable in  many of the regions where the disease is endemic. Melarsoprol has a  fatality rate of about 5% of users while eflornithine requires 56  infusions over a two-week period (one every two hours).

The new medicines are Nifurtimox eflornithine combination therapy (NECT)  which can be delivered twice-a-day for 10 days, a substantial  improvement on the previous formulation, but the DNDi is "excited" by  the prospect of human trials of fexinidazole, which was developed by the  German pharmaceutical firm Hoechst, now integrated into France-based  drug major Sanofi-Aventis, and abandoned in the 1980s. Phase I testing  is due to begin this year and, if successful, the compound could be  available to patients by 2014.