Conference on Drug Against Tropical Protozoan Parasites

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Diseases in humans caused by protozoa lead to suffering in hundreds of millions of people worldwide. We are approaching a time when the genomes of organisms responsible for diseases such as malaria, sleeping sickness, and leishmaniasis are fully sequenced. This provides an optimal setting for the discovery and evaluation of new drug targets, especially when combined with structural biology, combinatorial chemistry, and parasite genetics. Effective drugs are lacking for diseases including sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis, and current therapies for treating malaria are at risk due to the emergence of drug resistance. Thus, the development of new lines of anti-protozoan agents is urgently needed. Strategies and approaches for the rational design of drugs against tropical protozoan parasites will be the main focus of our conference. Groups of talks, one or two given by the chemist/structural biologist and the other by the parasitologist will exemplify the power of multi- disciplinary collaborations. Industry has taken little interest in the development of drugs against tropical diseases. Most of the research in this area is done by graduate students who are planning to present posters at the conference. We consider the poster sessions that occur throughout our meeting to be just as important as the collection of lecture presentations.