Singapore: Tokyo-headquartered Eisai has signed a global agreement with Brazil's Fundação Oswaldo Cruz for collaborations to develop new medicines and vaccines for malaria and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).

Under the agreement, Eisai and Fiocruz will identify research development collaborations targeting Eisai compounds for indications of malaria and NTDs. For the first collaboration, it has been decided to begin studies on the development of a medicine for cerebral malaria using E6446 and analogs, which are Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) antagonists.

Fiocruz is an agency of the Brazilian Ministry of Health with a mission to promote health and social development, to generate and disseminate scientific and technological knowledge, and to be an agent of citizenship. Fiocruz is responsible for the development and production of vaccines, drugs, reagents, and diagnostic kits relevant to public health in Brazil, and is the most active public institution in promoting the development of new drugs for the treatment of NTDs in the South American region.

This collaboration is a new partnership model that integrates Fiocruz's strengths in the research and development of medicines for NTDs in the South American region with Eisai's compounds and knowledge as a research-based pharmaceutical company, and which will seek to develop new treatments for malaria and NTDs as early and efficiently as possible.

Eisai is a signatory to the London Declaration, a coordinated effort to eliminate 10 NTDs by 2020 through the largest global public-private partnership to date. As part of its commitment under the declaration, Eisai has also agreed to produce 2.2 billion tablets of diethylcarbamazine (DEC), a lymphatic filariasis medicine currently in short supply globally, at its plant in India and supply it to the World Health Organization free of charge from 2013.