Kick off for the first event of the COST Action
The recent pandemic infection of COVID19 revealed the important problems of transmission of infectious agents from animals to humans or vice versa. Almost 75% of emerging human infections worldwide originated from animals. Existing human and veterinary drugs for vector-borne diseases are scarce, of limited efficacy and the emerging environmental problems in pharmaceutical use/production increase the focus on this issue.
Shedding light on the current situation will be the new “COST Action CA21111 One Health drugs against parasitic vector borne diseases in Europe and beyond” (acronym: OneHealthdrugs) starting with the first meeting in face-to-face mode. (http://carbon.dsv.unimo.it/CA21111/).
The project sees Unimore coordinating a research network involving more than 35 university centres and institutions, most of them European with international reach. Responsible for the Action funded by the European Commission is Prof. Maria Paola Costi assisted by Prof. Anabela Cordeiro Da Silva, University of Porto. Unimore's Department of Life Sciences will not only act as scientific leader, but also as Grant Holder, i.e. administrative manager.
The meeting "One Health drugs against vector-borne parasitic diseases in Europe and beyond", which will be held from 2.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m. on Monday 23 and from 9.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. on Tuesday 24 January 2023 at the Aula Magna of the Complesso San Geminiano (via San Geminiano, 3) in Modena will be an opportunity for pharmaceutical and environmental chemists, biologists, parasitologists, veterinarians and ecotoxicologists to meet to take stock of the situation of medicines used against vector-mediated parasitic infections that can be transmitted from animals to humans and vice versa, and the impact they have on the environment.
At the conference entitled “Medicinal chemistry methods, materials and environmental impact “ advanced methods and strategies of medicinal chemistry, new sources of drugs, not only natural but also from industrial waste, will be presented. The subject of impact on the environment will be an important topic to be developed during the four-year duration of the action. The main aim and objective of OneHealthdrugs is to coordinate ongoing R&D on new drugs against neglected infectious diseases (NID) transmitted by phlebotomes, bedbugs, flies, for example, and causing infections such as leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis, schisotosmiasis etc., both human and animal, taking into account the aspects of environmental contamination in the context of the diseases. Preventing contamination of the environment not only avoids the destructive consequences on living organisms, water, soil, but also avoids/reduces drug resistance problems, is useful in dealing with infections that are widespread today, and prevents future ones.
'Cooperation between different competences is necessary,' says Prof. Maria Paola Costi of Unimore, 'to define how new NID drugs can be developed in a more sustainable approach. OneHealthdrugs aims to co-ordinate the discovery of drugs for human and veterinary use that block vector-borne NIDs while respecting the principles of optimal profiling for both organisms, increasing the quality of drugs through the use of innovative technologies'.
COST Action is the ideal platform for this purpose because it aims at the integration and generation of synergies between chemical/biological/human/veterinary and earth and related environmental science R&D experts within academia, SMEs, industry, government.
Categorie: International - english
Articolo pubblicato da: Ufficio Stampa Unimore - ufficiostampa@unimore.it il 20/01/2023