A University of Nebraska Medical Center research team and two partner institutions have received a five-year, $3 million grant to try to develop one or more drug candidates for schistosomiasis or "snail fever," a tropical parasitic disease that infects more than 200 million people worldwide.
The grant is from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the institutes that make up the National Institutes of Health.
Jonathan Vennerstrom, Ph.D., professor in the UNMC College of Pharmacy, is heading the UNMC research team studying schistosomiasis, which ranks behind only malaria as the most devastating parasitic disease.
Dr. Vennerstrom’s team is collaborating with researchers from Australia's Monash University and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute.
These are the same partnering institutions that Dr. Vennerstrom joined forces with in recent years to discover the new antimalarial drug Synriam, and the antimalarial drug candidate, OZ439, currently in Phase IIb clinical trials.
If successful, OZ439 would be a single-dose antimalarial drug, a long-sought breakthrough against an illness that the World Health Organization estimates affected 198 million worldwide in 2013 and killed 500,000 people, mostly children in Africa.
Schistosomiasis, also known as bilharzia, is a disease caused by parasitic worms. The worms that cause schistosomiasis are not found in the United States. Most cases of the disease occur in Africa, South America, the Caribbean, Middle East, Southern China, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines.
The parasites that cause schistosomiasis live in certain types of freshwater snails. The infectious form of the parasite emerges from the snail and contaminates the water. Someone can become infected when their skin comes in contact with the contaminated water.
Symptoms of schistosomiasis are caused by the body's reaction to the eggs produced by worms, not by the worms themselves.
When adult worms are present, the eggs that are produced usually travel to the intestine, liver or bladder, causing inflammation or scarring. Children who are repeatedly infected can develop anemia, malnutrition and learning difficulties. After years of infection, the parasite also can damage the liver, intestine, lungs, and bladder. Rarely, eggs are found in the brain or spinal cord and can cause seizures, paralysis, or spinal cord inflammation.
Dr. Vennerstrom said the project brings together three labs with complementary expertise and skill sets in medicinal chemistry, ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion), and schistosome drug studies.
Dr. Vennerstrom and his UNMC College of Pharmacy team are the medicinal chemistry experts. Susan Charman, Ph.D., heads up Monash University's efforts in drug candidate profiling. And Jennifer Keiser, Ph.D., and her Swiss TPH colleagues, bring a team that knows snail fever and previous efforts to combat the disease.
The long-term goal, Dr. Vennerstrom said, is to discover a new orally-active, single-dose drug effective against all parasite stages. The team believes it has some innovative, promising leads, and – judging from the NIH funding – the NIH agrees.
Other UNMC College of Pharmacy colleagues involved in the project include Yuxiang Dong, Ph.D., associate professor, and Xiaofang Wang, Ph.D., assistant professor.
We are Nebraska Medicine and UNMC. Our mission is to lead the world in transforming lives to create a healthy future for all individuals and communities through premier educational programs, innovative research and extraordinary patient care.