Dr. Timothy Geary

Professor and Director, Institute of Parasitology
McGill University

Drug Discovery for Neglected Tropical Diseases:
Reversing the Equation

Infections of humans by parasitic helminths once were global in incidence. More than a billion people still serve as hosts to these worms, almost all of them living in developing nations. These Neglected Tropical Diseases cause significant morbidity, contributing to the cycle of poverty which constrains development in resource-limited regions. Medicines to treat these infections have generally been adopted from veterinary use (for livestock and companion animals) and have not been optimized for humans. Several are donated by Western pharmaceutical companies for use in humans in Africa and elsewhere. An alternative approach is to foster innovation systems that enable scientists living in areas most affected by these diseases to assume leadership roles in the search for new and better medicines to treat them.

This lecture introduces parasitic diseases of poverty and describes a novel drug discovery process that was implemented in South Africa and Botswana, focused on identifying high-value antiparasitic drug candidates in collections of chemicals purified from African sources. Changing the way in which drugs are provided to regions of poverty requires the strengthening of scientific capacity as well as the development of new ways of thinking about intellectual property and the requirement for local leadership. Integrating multiple levels of drug discovery and development in this context is an unfinished story with significant challenges and great potential.

Dr. Tomislav Friščić

Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry
McGill University

Chemistry 2.0

Rapid consumption of feedstocks, coupled with a massive impact of chemical manufacturing on the environment, has greatly increased the interest and awareness of chemists in the development of cleaner, safer and more efficient chemical methodologies. A major concern are solvents, that are globally used in excess of 30 million tons and largely end in toxic waste. As chemistry is unimaginable without solvents, addressing this problem requires a re-examination of a fundamental principle of how chemistry is performed. Over the past decade mechanochemistry, i.e. reactions induced by milling or grinding,¹ has been applied with great success to a wide range of systems, from organic and inorganic synthesis, to organometallics, functional materials (metal-organic frameworks, pharmaceutical cocrystals) and nanomaterials.

While mechanochemistry offers a general route to conduct chemistry without bulk solvents, it also provides a means to discover reactions and synthesize targets that are difficult or even considered impossible to make from solution. It appears that mechanochemistry and related solvent-free methods could provide access to Chemistry 2.0: the cleaner, safer and more efficient chemistry sought by modern chemists.²

1. Do, Friščić ACS Centr. Sci. 2017, 3, 13.
2. Do, Friščić Synlett. 2017, 28, 2066.