Drug Discovery for Emerging and Neglected Tropical Diseases: Advances, Challenges and Perspectives

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a diverse group of conditions that affect over 1 billion people in low- and middle-income countries, characterized by poor governmental support, scarce funding, and a lack of innovative actions toward control and treatment. Caused by a variety of agents, including viruses, fungi, bacteria, protozoan, and worms, NTDs occur mainly in tropical areas. Nonetheless, current environmental and social changes boost the dissemination of NTDs into non-endemic regions, expanding the population at risk.

Within this context, two scenarios aggravate global public health: the emergence of new and the reemergence of old tropical diseases, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic period, and mostly because of antimicrobial resistance and failure of public health measures.

The social and economic impact of emerging/reemerging and neglected tropical infections worldwide highlights the crucial need for successful approaches to controlling/eradicating these diseases.

Since effective vaccines are not broadly available, the therapeutic approach remains the most important strategy to control and manage emerging and neglected tropical diseases. Thus, the development of novel treatments or the improvement of the available ones remains a constant need. Despite the progress in this field, mainly due to scientific/technical advances, engagement of the scientific community, and increasing public-private partnership efforts, several gaps in early drug discovery persist, constricting the development of novel antimicrobial agents.

Therefore, this Research Topic aims to publish data on recent progress in early drug discovery for emerging/neglected tropical diseases, including parasitic, bacterial, viral, and fungal infections. Here, we will gather valuable insights related to the development of new experimental approaches, identification of novel therapeutic strategies, and mechanism of action of classical or new antimicrobials.

In this Research Topic, we welcome submissions of Original Research and Review articles, on the following (but not limited to) topics:

- Development of in vitro models of early drug discovery for tropical diseases;
- Experimental low, medium, and high-throughput approaches (including target-based and cell-based assays) to identify novel drug candidates against emerging and neglected tropical diseases;
- Novel therapeutic strategies for emerging and neglected tropical diseases;
- Drug repurposing/drug combination for the development of novel drug candidates;
- In vitro ADME-Tox assays to support the drug discovery pipeline;
- Mechanism of action of known or novel antimicrobials.

We would like to extend special thanks to the coordinator of this Research Topic Dr. Denise Pilger who is currently affiliated with the University College London, United Kingdom.

Keywords: Tropical diseases, Drug discovery, Drugs screening, Drug repurposing, Drug combination, Antibacterial, Antiviral, Antiprotozoal, Antifungals, Antimicrobial

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.