A·WOL consortium launched their latest venture today in Liverpool, the A·WOL II Macrofilaricidal Drug Development Project. The event included project collaborators from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the University of Liverpool and the University Clinic Bonn who met to discuss recent research outputs and plans for the coming year.
The A·WOL Macrofilaricidal Drug Development project was funded in May this year by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The aim of the project is to develop and optimize drugs and regimes of registered and re-purposed anti-wolbachial macrofilaricidal drugs selected from the A∙WOL I screening campaign and to test these in combination with standard anti-filarial drugs.
Professor Mark Taylor, Director of the A·WOL Programme said: “This is an exciting time for the A·WOL consortium as we move into our second phase of funding. The A·WOL Drug Development project will run alongside its sister project, A·WOL Drug Discovery headed by Prof Steve Ward at LSTM, and will bring together world experts in drug development, chemistry and biology to fast-track active anti-Wolbachia compounds into field trials in Africa”.
The A·WOL Consortium consists of both academic and industrial partners funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose aim is to develop new drugs against onchocerciasis (river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis) by targeting the essential symbiont - Wolbachia.