The NITD currently focuses on Dengue Fever, Tuberculosis and Malaria research thus addressing three of the most important tropical diseases worldwide. The NITD performs basic and applied drug discovery research including target identification, development of screening assays, synthesis and testing of drug candidates. NITD has implemented all necessary technology for state of the art drug discovery, except high throughput screening which is done in collaboration with Discovery Technology at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel.

Currently there are no treatments for Dengue available. However, a number of vaccines are in clinical development. Trends suggest that Dengue epidemics may expand beyond the boundaries of the developing world, which underscores the need for therapeutic strategies. The Dengue Unit at NITD focuses on the finding of new small molecular antiviral treatments.

Drug treatment of TB is currently relying on 30-year-old drugs which are slowly losing their effectiveness. To combat this problem the Tuberculosis Unit is working on the identification of new drugs for the treatment of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB. Furthermore our scientists are actively working on approaches to shorten the current treatment time from 6-9 months to 2 months. This target may be achievable by focusing drug discovery efforts on protein targets that are involved in latency.

Over the last few decades, the dramatic increase in Plasmodium falciparum drug resistance to chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine has caused a resurgence of the malaria burden and morbidity in particular in sub-Saharan Africa. There is a very urgent need of new antimalarial drugs to help control this disease in endemic countries. NITD is the leading institution of a private-public partnership composed of numerous leading institutions involved in malaria research and drug discovery. Funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Medicines for Malaria Venture and the Singapore Economic Development Board, NITD and its partners intend to discover new antimalarial drugs, with potential for single-dose cure for falciparum malaria and, a curative modality for vivax malaria. NITD specifically provides the management as well as the critical chemistry and pharmacology resources required for the discovery of new efficacious, safe and affordable antimalarial drugs.

The Chemistry Unit contains some of the core drug discovery skills that are necessary for the identification of drug candidates for development, including assay development, medium throughput screening, molecular informatics and medicinal chemistry.

The Pharmacology Unit is coordinating in-house and outside efforts to study the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion of drug candidates, using in vitro profiling assays and in vivo studies in rodents. Resources are also allocated to develop or access therapeutic models of Tuberculosis and Dengue infection. Non-invasive imaging technologies will be implemented for direct visualization of the infection's evolution. Bio-imaging will help reduce the number of animals engaged in a study, provide faster and more qualitative results, and hopefully predict clinical outcome such as cure, lung sterilization, or relapse.