Novo Nordisk action to help combat neglected diseases

Denmark's Novo Nordisk has announced a scientific collaboration that will benefit both Chinese pharmaceutical development and World Health Organization efforts to combat neglected diseases.

Effective April 28, Novo Nordisk is donating a licence to its small-molecule compound library to the National Center for Drug Screening affiliated to Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The center will use the library - both the actual compounds and an associated database - for screening activities to identify new drug candidates for infectious tropical diseases that affect people in poor countries.

The WHO-based Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) will select targets and screens to support the identification of new drug candidates or leads for infectious tropical diseases, including malaria, tuberculosis, African sleeping sickness, dengue, Chagas disease, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, filariasis, onchocerciasis and soil-transmitted helminths. It will also bring in young scientists from developing countries, especially Africa, to be trained at the Institute.