Infectious Disease Drug Development and Molecular Pharmacology – DDMP

Topics

• Early-stage optimization of therapeutic leads, including small molecule inhibitors, natural compounds, therapeutic peptides, and adjuvant therapies directly inhibiting the pathogen’s lifecycle
• Molecular characterization of anti-infective agents, including mechanism of action, structural characterization, and confirmation of target engagement for lead optimization
• Molecular characterization of drug combination regimens and repurposed drugs
• Development and optimization of novel assays and models to test drug efficacy, including organ-on-a-chip, in vitro and ex-vivo human tissue models, and computational model systems (artificial intelligence, machine learning)
• Early drug toxicity and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic studies

Shared Interests and Overlaps

• There are substantial shared interests in drug development with Drug Discovery and Molecular Pharmacology A (DMPA), and with Advancing Therapeutics B (ATB). Applications that emphasize initial discovery methods may be reviewed in DMPA. Applications that emphasize late-stage drug development efforts such as diversification, optimization and preclinical toxicity and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic studies or early-stage clinical trials of novel therapeutic and drug-delivery strategies may be reviewed in ATB. Applications that emphasize optimization of lead therapeutics may be reviewed in DDMP.
• There are shared interests in early-stage optimization of therapeutic leads with Discovery and Optimization of Immunotherapeutics and Biological Therapeutics [DCAI (82)]. Applications that focus on the optimization of immunotherapies, host-directed therapies, and living/replicating agents (i.e. phages, engineered bacteria, probiotic yeast/fungi…) may be reviewed in DCAI (82), whereas applications that focus on the optimization of agents directly inhibiting the pathogen’s lifecycle may be reviewed in DDMP.
• There are shared interests in the early stages of anti-infective therapeutic drug development with Chemical Synthesis & Biosynthesis (CSB).  Applications that emphasize synthetic and biosynthetic approaches with limited biological assessments may be reviewed in CSB. Applications that couple synthetic approaches with extensive biological analyses may be reviewed in DDMP.
• There are shared interests in the area of instrumentation/device development with Instrumentation and Systems Development (ISD). Applications that emphasize the development of hardware (device/instrument/biosensor) may be reviewed at ISD. Applications that emphasize the biological evaluation of anti-infective efficacy/activity of already established tools/instruments may be reviewed in DDMP.