Wellcome Trust funds dengue fever research In Belgium

The Wellcome Trust has awarded Euro 28m (£25m) to the Laboratory for Virology and Experimental Chemotherapy (Rega Institute) and the Centre for Drug Design and Discovery (CD3) at The Catholic University of Leuven (K U Leuven) in Belgium for research into new treatments for dengue fever.

Dengue or "breakbone fever" is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions, but as yet, there are no vaccines or treatments for the disease.

Researchers at the Rega Institute, CD3 and K U Leuven will receive funding as part of the Wellcome Trust's Seeding Drug Discovery Initiative, a â"šÂ¬101m (£91m) fund aimed at developing new drugs to address areas of unmet medical need.

The World Health Organisation estimates that approximately 50-100 million people are infected with the dengue virus every year. In approximately half a million cases the disease takes on a life-threatening form: sufferers develop bleeding or go into shock. The majority of sufferers are children and the number of cases has increased rapidly in recent years.

Currently, the only way to counteract the spread of dengue fever is to kill the mosquitoes that carry the virus. Since no vaccines exist, it is of the utmost importance to develop medications for the treatment of dengue fever, including preventative medication, as has been done in the case of malaria.

Professor Johan Neyts of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Rega Institute at K U Leuven will lead the research.

CD3, directed by Dr Patrick Chaltin, specialises in the discovery of new medications, always in co-operation with academic research groups or small biotech companies. K U Leuven Research & Development (LRD) founded CD3 in 2006 in partnership with the European Investment Fund (EIF).

In the past three years, CD3 has established and contributed to approximately 20 projects searching for molecules that may constitute the foundation for new therapies for diseases such as AIDS, cancer and Alzheimer's.