Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Methods To Identify And Develop Drugs For Cryptosporidiosis, Rajiv Satish Jumani

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Cryptosporidiosis is a common diarrheal disease caused by intestinal infection with the apicomplexan parasite Cryptosporidium, in humans usually either with C. hominis or C. parvum. Unfortunately, given a large burden of disease in children and immunocompromised people like AIDS patients, the only currently approved treatment, nitazoxanide, is unreliable for these patient populations. To address the urgent need for new drugs for the most vulnerable populations, large phenotypic screening efforts have been established to identify anti-Cryptosporidium growth inhibitors in vitro (hits). However, in the absence of a gold standard drug, the in vitro and in vivo characteristics that should be used …