The UnLeished Challenge has begun for the month of March!
It is 2021, where are the new kinetoplastid drug treatments?
Tips to researchers:
Day 1) Use your leftover parasites in a simple drug screen that won’t take much time.
Day 2) Do you already have “published data” that others may find useful but was not a “hit” discussed in your article and only showed up as a dot in a graph?
Day 3) Culture media matters. Be consistent but also try out other media types to see if you get similar results.
Day 4) All levels of researcher/student can do this. Make it a contest among your lab members!
Day 5) DIY plant extracts can be done easily with plant material from your yard and/or workplace. Blenders work wonders!
Day 6) Multiple days can be sampled from the same culture to assess parasite number/viability. Just give it time!
Day 7) Do you dare mix 2 or more compounds to look for synergy?
Day 8) Which developmental parasite stage will you test?
Pick a drug/compound that has not been published to work or not work against your kinetoplastid of choice. Then test it. It is that simple. Do the parasites die, stay the same, or grow even better? All three outcomes are valuable pieces of information as we research new drug candidates, neutral compounds, and potential culture media additives/replacements to decrease the cost of growing parasites.
Qualitative and quantitative data are always encouraged!
Email and/or tweet your results to be posted on a database that will highlight what each compound does. It is time to work together as a community of researchers with common purpose and goals.
The Open Source UnLeished Database will be available in the coming months for researchers to use as a starting point for drug/compound development for a variety of applications using kinetoplastid parasites.
Email submissions can be sent to todd.a.lyda@paratryp.org
and/or
Tweet your results so everyone can see them and make sure @ParaTryp gets a mention!
Submissions should include at a minimum:
- the name of the drug/compound
- the concentration(s) tested
- the result (death, growth, and/or no effect)