GHIT Call for Proposals: Hit-to-Lead Platform 2025

The GHIT Fund announces the Request for Proposals (RFP) for the Hit-to-Lead Platform (HTLP), designed to leverage Japan’s expertise in medicinal chemistry and facilitate access to relevant and diverse compounds to address the unmet needs of the following diseases.

Malaria
Tuberculosis
Chagas Disease
Schistosomiasis
Viral Infectious Diseases with Pandemic Potential

HTLP projects will focus on the aspect of the drug discovery and development process that advances hits, identified through compound library screening, into lead compounds that can then be optimized into drug candidates. This platform will provide a bridge from early drug discovery to GHIT’s Product Development Platform that begins with the lead-optimization step.

The key requirement of the Hit-to-Lead Platform is to convert drug hits derived from Japanese compound libraries or hits identified using innovative Japanese technologies into lead series through a comprehensive assessment of chemical integrity, synthetic accessibility, scalability and novelty, functional behavior, and structure-activity relationships (SAR), as well as bio-physiochemical and absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME) properties.

Eligibility:

Each proposal must have at least one Japanese organization and one non-Japanese organization.
The GHIT Fund requires each HTLP project to partner with one of the three leading drug development PDPs as a partner. A partnership with one of the below PDPs must be in place at the time of ITA submission:
- Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV)
- Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi)
- TB Alliance
Each organization must submit a certified copy of its registration and financial statements (audited by an independent auditor) from the most recent 3 fiscal years.

GHIT Call for Proposals: Hit-to-Lead Platform 2025

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