Date: 2014-09-16
Type of information: R&D agreement
Compound: new antimalarial medicines including SJ733
Company: Eisai (Japan) St. Jude Children\'s Research Hospital (USA - TN) Medicines for Malaria Venture (Switzerland)
Therapeutic area: Infectious diseases - Parasitic diseases
Type agreement:
Action mechanism: SJ733 is a novel inhibitor of Plasmodium falciparum ATPase4 (PfATP4), a critical ion channel for sodium regulation in the parasite that causes malaria. As a result of this mechanism, SJ733 can clear parasites very rapidly. The clinical candidate SJ733 was developed by a consortium of researchers in academic and non-profit organizations in the U.S. including St. Jude, the University of California, Rutgers University, and the University of South Florida.
Disease: malaria
Details: * On September 16, 2014, Eisai announced that it has entered into two joint research agreements for the development of new antimalarial medicines. The first of these agreements is a joint development program with St. Jude Children\'s Research Hospital (Memphis ) and the non-profit public–private partnership Medicines for Malaria Venture. Under this agreement, the three parties will conduct preclinical and clinical development of the oral antimalarial candidate compound SJ733. In addition to being rapidly effective and having the potential to cure in a single dose, SJ733 is non-artemisinin based, which means it could also be effective in patients for whom existing artemisinin-based malaria treatments have little effect due to recently increasing resistance. These projects were evaluated and each was awarded a grant by the Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (GHIT Fund), an international non-profit organization that aims to promote the discovery of new health technologies for eliminating infectious diseases prevalent in developing countries.
Financial terms:
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