Astellas announces new tropical disease alliances

Astellas has announced new agreements with a pair of Japanese institutions that will focus on developing new treatments for neglected tropical diseases caused by dengue virus.

The first of these agreements is with the Tokyo Institute of Technology and will utilise the facility's TSUBAME 2.0 supercomputer to efficiently discover new drug candidates, while also leveraging the expertise of the organisation's staff.

Meanwhile, the firm is also teaming up with Nagasaki University and will provide multiple compounds with possible anti-dengue virus activities for the university's experts to evaluate using experimental models of infections for dengue fever and dengue haemorrhagic fever.

This is the second collaboration on neglected tropical diseases that Astellas has signed with Nagasaki University, following a November 2012 agreement to discover new drugs for the treatment of conditions caused by protozoan parasites.

The company said the alliances will "accelerate the discovery of new drugs for patients suffering from dengue fever/dengue hemorrhagic fever in the world through … collaborative research aiming to contribute to improve global public health problems".