Thomas Dorlo and Elin Svensson awarded SEK 8.6 million in EU funding

The infectious disease cutaneous leishmaniasis affects more than one million people annually and causes severe consequences. In parallel, tuberculosis once again pose a global threat and every year 1.5 million people die as a result of resistant tuberculosis bacteria. Common to both diseases is the urgent need for effective drugs, and the EU and Global Health EDCTP3 are now allocating a total of € 750,000 to Thomas Dorlo and Elin Svensson for projects aiming to contribute with new treatments and structures to streamline future drug development

Thomas Dorlo, Professor of Pharmacometrics, receives € 450,000 – equivalent to SEK 5.18 million – for a project in which he in collaboration with seven research groups in Belgium, Ethiopia, the United Kingdom and South Africa will carry out an innovative clinical study of five potential treatments against an Ethiopian variant of the parasites causing cutaneous leishmaniasis.

“Cutaneous leishmaniasis is one of the diseases defined by the World Health Organization as neglected, a description including lack of effective drugs, insufficient knowledge about dosages and infrastructures often incapable of meeting needs of care. We now have five promising leads that need further testing before approval. We will do this in the new consortium where we will also integrate pharmacometric modeling, which in the long term can accelerate the development of much-needed drugs and therapies,” states Professor Dorlo.

Elin Svensson, Associate Professor of Pharmacometrics, is awarded € 300,000 – equivalent to SEK 3.45 million – for two international research collaborations with focus on bedaquiline, a medication sold under the brand name Sirturo to treat active tuberculosis. Since 2013 the World Health Organization recommends that bedaquiline is reserved for treating multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, but now a threat is identified in the form of resistance to bedaquiline among tubercle bacteria.

text: Magnus Alsne, photo: Mikael Wallerstedt a o