PALO ALTO, Calif. & SAN FRANCISCO & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Anacor Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ANAC), the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Sandler Center and the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute (LFKRI) of the New York Blood Center (NYBC) today announced the establishment of a research and development collaboration to discover new drug therapies for the treatment of river blindness (onchocerciasis), a parasitic disease that is the second leading cause of infectious blindness worldwide, and is most prevalent in Africa. The collaboration will combine Anacor’s novel boron-based chemistry platform and drug discovery and development capabilities with the Sandler Center’s expertise in neglected disease biology and drug discovery and the LFKRI’s expertise in onchocerciasis. The collaboration’s goal is to identify a novel, potent macro-filaricidal drug candidate that is capable of killing adult worms. Current medications kill only microfilaria, resulting in the need to treat the same infected individual repeatedly over several years to outlast the lifecycle of the adult worms and to stop transmission of the disease. A drug that kills adult worms would simplify ongoing onchocerciasis elimination programs and provide improved outcomes to patients and communities affected by this devastating disease.
