Principal Investigator (PI)
The Foundation is providing £211,905 in support.
Dr. Alba Gigante
T. cruzi is a protozoan parasite that causes Chagas disease, the highest impact infectious disease in Latin America. Previous work at Tres Cantos has identified a total of 222 small molecule prioritized according to their potency against T.cruzi, cytotoxicity, and physico-chemical properties, called TCAKS-Chagas. The purpose of this project is to determine which among these prioritized in vitro-active compounds also has substantial in vivo activity on T. cruzi, and thus promise as a hit for lead compound development.
The investigators from University of Georgia, led by Prof. Rick L. Tarleton, have developed a facile and rapid assay that makes use of transgenic T. cruzi lines expressing fluorescent proteins, which allows imaging the establishment and expansion of these tagged parasites after a single administration of compound, and hence determine in vivo efficacy of a number of compounds (up to 30 at a time) in < 1 week. This rapid in vivo assay seems to be an excellent predictor of long-term efficacy and is thus a potent screening method for selection of candidates for subsequent studies.