A Novel High Throughput Assay for Anthelmintic Drug Screening and Resistance Diagnosis by Real-Time Monitoring of Parasite Motility

Parasitic worms cause untold morbidity and mortality on billions of people and livestock. Drugs are available but resistance is problematic in livestock parasites and is a looming threat for human helminths. Currently, new drug discovery and resistance monitoring is hindered as drug efficacy is assessed by observing motility or development of parasites using laborious, subjective, low-throughput methods evaluated by eye using microscopy. Here we describe a novel application for a cell monitoring device (xCELLigence) that can simply and objectively assess real time anti-parasite efficacy of drugs on eggs, larvae and adults in a fully automated, label-free, high-throughput fashion. This technique overcomes the current low-throughput bottleneck in anthelmintic drug development and resistance detection pipelines. The widespread use of this device to screen for new therapeutics or emerging drug resistance will be an invaluable asset in the fight against human, animal and plant parasitic helminths and other pathogens that plague our planet

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The concentrations of some phytochemicals in three species of edible mushrooms (Coral mushroom, Agaricus bisporus and Lentinus sajor) that are common in Ohaukwu area of Ebonyi State, Nigeria were determined using standard methods. The results revealed the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, saponins, oxalates, phytates, HCN and phenols in significant amounts with tannins being the highest, followed by flavonoids and phenols, while HCN was the least in concentration. There was a significant variation among the mushrooms in their composition of the phytochemicals (p<0.05). The obtained values of the phytochemicals in all the mushrooms were interestingly found to be significantly lower (p<0.05) than their toxicity levels according to World Health Organization (WHO) safe limits. The results of this study suggest that these mushrooms may be very safe for consumption in terms of phytochemical toxicity and at the same time have some medicinal properties

Genomic-scale prioritization of drug targets:the TDR Targets database

The increasing availability of genomic data for pathogens that cause tropical diseases has created new opportunities for drug discovery and development. However, if the potential of such data is to be fully exploited, the data must be effectively integrated and be easy to interrogate. Here, we discuss the development of the TDRtargets.org database (http://tdrtargets.org), which encompasses extensive genetic, biochemical and pharmacological data related to tropical disease pathogens, as well as computationally predicted druggability for potential targets and compound desirability information. By allowing the integration and weighting of this information, this database aims to facilitate the identification and prioritisation of candidate drug targets for pathogens