The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) is noted for its research into diseases caused by filarial worms: onchocerciasis (river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis). It has been announced that LSTM has been awarded $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help it further develop this work - see LabNews report.

LSTM has established a global consortium of six academic and industrial partners, called the Anti-Wolbachia Consortium, to screen and develop new combinations of potential filariasis drugs. [Wolbachia are bacteria which filarial worms need to survive.]

Researcher Mark Taylor said: “Drug resistance is making current treatment programmes less effective in areas where the disease had virtually disappeared. Ivermectin [the mainstay of efforts to control filarial disease] is a fantastic drug, but as with any control approach, it is dangerous to rely on a single tool. Unless we come up with a new treatment, it could mean that the major source of blindness in Africa will become untreatable.”