Pfizer and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) on Wednesday announced plans to team up in an effort to identify new drug candidates for the treatment of three tropical diseases, the Associated Press/Business Week reports. The scientists will test the efficacy of Pfizer drug candidates against sleeping sickness, visceral leishmaniasis, and Chagas disease.

According to Pfizer and DNDi, Chagas disease infects 8 million people and kills 14,000 each year. "They estimated that sleeping sickness and visceral leishmaniasis kill almost 100,000 people per year combined," the news service writes. "Available treatments for the illnesses can be expensive and highly toxic, and some of them do not treat all phases of the respective diseases" (11/18).

"Despite considerable progress made in recent years, these three diseases continue to take a terrible human toll and represent a significant social burden for developing countries," Manos Perros, vice president and chief scientific officer of antivirals research, Pfizer Global Research & Development, said in a href="http://mediaroom…