Figure 5.

Forward and reverse pharmacological approaches in anthelmintic drug discovery. In forward approaches, potential compounds are first tested on model organisms and changes in the phenotypic/functional activity are monitored. Then, the potential hits are fractionated to identify the lead molecules. These lead molecules are further tested on model parasites and in vivo animal models and the successful candidates are analysed through the target identification process, either by genetic approaches/transcriptomics or metabolomics. In the reverse pharmacological approaches, promising drug targets are first identified and purified and then potential anthelmintic compounds that interact with these targets are screened. The successful compounds are validated in vivo.