Brief description of the African Network for Drugs and Diagnostics Innovation (ANDI).

<p>Brief description of the African Network for Drugs and Diagnostics Innovation (ANDI).</p

Examples of public–private partnerships in drug discovery against neglected diseases.

<p><b>NCDS - The National Center for Drug Screening, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences.</b> Contribution: provides infrastructure and expertise to conduct high-throughput screening (HTS) and identification of leads for pharmaceutical development, as well as training of fellows from developing countries. <b>NN - Novo Nordisk A/S.</b> Contribution: supply of compound libraries, expertise with pharmaceutical research, development, and commercialization activities. <b>WHO - World Health Organization Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (WHO/TDR).</b> Contribution: oversees the management and technical review of the collaboration, supplies molecular targets through academic collaborators to support HTS, provides access to screening, medicinal chemistry, and DMPK networks, and sponsors fellows from Africa to be trained at NCDS as part of the collaboration.</p

Product development partnerships (PDPs) focusing on drugs.

<p>Product development partnerships (PDPs) focusing on drugs.</p

NCDS scientists and African fellows are analyzing the results obtained from a TDR commissioned HTS campaign against a molecular target in tuberculosis (July 2009).

<p>NCDS scientists and African fellows are analyzing the results obtained from a TDR commissioned HTS campaign against a molecular target in tuberculosis (July 2009).</p

Hybrid Lentivirus-transposon Vectors With a Random Integration Profile in Human Cells

Gene delivery by human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-based lentiviral vectors (LVs) is efficient, but genomic integration of the viral DNA is strongly biased toward transcriptionally active loci resulting in an increased risk of insertional mutagenesis in gene therapy protocols. Nonviral Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon vectors have a significantly safer insertion profile, but efficient delivery into relevant cell/tissue types is a limitation. In an attempt to combine the favorable features of the two vector systems we established a novel hybrid vector technology based on SB transposase-mediated insertion of lentiviral DNA circles generated during transduction of target cells with integrase (IN)-defective LVs (IDLVs). By construction of a lentivirus-transposon hybrid vector allowing transposition exclusively from circular viral DNA substrates, we demonstrate that SB transposase added in trans directs efficient transposon mobilization from DNA circles in vector-transduced cells. Both transfected plasmid DNA and transduced IDLVs can serve as the source of active transposase. Most important, we demonstrate that the SB transposase overrides the natural lentiviral integration pathway and directs vector integration less frequently toward transcriptional units, resulting in a random genomic integration profile. The novel hybrid vector system combines the attractive features of efficient gene delivery by viral transduction and a safer genomic integration profile by DNA transposition