New potential sleeping sickness drug reaches human trials

Scientists have announced that the development of an oral drug to treat sleeping sickness has now reached the stage for human clinical laboratory trials.

The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), Anacor Pharmaceuticals and SCYNEXIS revealed that the partnership has successfully completed pre-clinical studies for the first new oral drug to specifically target the fatal disease, officially known as human African trypanosomiasis (HAT).

In an article published in the PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases journal, scientists said that the innovative drug was shown to be safe and had the ability to cross the brain-blood barrier, making it an effective treatment against stages one and two of the illness.

Almost 70 per cent of all reported cases of sleeping sickness are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with the country reporting 1,000 new cases of the fatal disease each year.

Dr Miaka Mia Bilenge, special advisor to the National Control Program for Human African Trypanosomiasis in the DRC, said: "We very much look forward to the start of human trials, and we hope that at long last this will give us a tool for sustainable elimination of this dreaded disease."