Said Mohammed Ali receives the R. Geigy Foundation Medal of Honor

Great honor for Dr. Said Mohammed Ali: The health expert and director of the Public Health Laboratory-Ivo de Carneri (PHL-IdC) in Pemba/Tanzania receives a medal of honor from the R. Geigy Foundation. “Dr. Said Ali is a long-standing partner of Swiss TPH and plays a central role in the research of interventions against neglected tropical diseases on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba,” says Jürg Utzinger, Director of Swiss TPH and President of the R. Geigy Foundation.

Focus on parasitic worm infections

The collaboration between the researchers led by Said Mohammed Ali and Swiss TPH focuses on those diseases that cause great suffering outside of global health priorities. We are talking about parasitic worm infections (helminths) such as schistosomiasis or hookworm infections, which affect over a billion people in low-income countries worldwide, but for which there are only a few drugs available. “Thanks to our joint research and integrated control approaches, schistosomiasis has been significantly reduced in Zanzibar,” says Stefanie Knopp, head of the Helminth Interventios research group at Swiss TPH.

Prof. Said Mohammed Ali with Prof. Jürg Uztinger (left), Prof. Jenny Keiser (middle) and Dr. Steffi Knopp (right)

Emodepside: Clinical trials for the development of new active substances against whipworms and hookworms

Over the past two years, Jennifer Keiser, head of the Helminth Drug Development unit at Swiss TPH, together with her team in Allschwil and Dr. Said Ali's group in Pemba, have achieved a major coup: they tested the active substance “emodepside” - which originally comes from veterinary medicine and is used against a broad spectrum of threadworms - for its efficacy against whipworms and hookworms in humans. It turned out that emodepside was able to cure the vast majority of study participants. “The chances are good that emodepside can make a decisive difference in the fight against numerous parasitic worm diseases,” says Keiser.

Today, Swiss TPH, PHL-IdC and Bayer are working on further developing the active substance and filling the drug pipeline for these neglected diseases. What began in the studies in Zanzibar could therefore prove to be a real trump card in the fight against neglected diseases. This is just another compelling reason to invest more than ever in global collaboration.