Objective
Leishmaniasis has become the second most important human parasitic disease, affecting more than 12 million people worldwide. Its visceral form is always mortal in the absence of treatment. The disease is spreading since 1993, mainly due to the appearance o f resistance to the current drugs Glucantime and Pestontam. Thus, in some tropical hiperendemic areas, most cases are non-responsive to the treatment, whereas in Spain and other Mediterranean countries, drug-resistance leishmaniasis keeps on spreading as t he number of patients co-infected with HTV increases. Therefore, there is an urgent need for developing new drugs. Miltefosine is the most promising alternative, and it has become the first oral drug registered to treat visceral leishmaniasis.
As in the ca se of cancer cells resistant to the chemotherapy, ABC (ATP Binding Cassette) transporters over-expression is responsible of the appearance of parasites resistant to many of these drugs, including Glucantime, Pestontam and miltefosine. Only three classes of ABC transporters have been studied in Leishmania, but the number of members of this family increases continuously as the parasite genome project is being developed. The objective of this project is to study the functional role of some of these new ABC genes. We plan to analyse their implication in key biological functions of the parasite to check their potential as new drug targets for leishmanicidal agents. Moreover, we will determine the ability of these transporters to confer resistance to miltefosine and other drugs. With this aim, we will generate mutant parasites over-expressing or deleting these genes, and analyse the resulting phenotype.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine psychiatry sleep disorders
- medical and health sciences health sciences infectious diseases malaria
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine oncology
- medical and health sciences basic medicine pharmacology and pharmacy drug resistance multidrug resistance
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics genomes
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
FP6-2002-MOBILITY-11
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Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
MADRID
Spain
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.