Parasites exact a devastating toll on health and economic productivity, infecting man and also domestic livestock. Drugs used to combat parasitic diseases are deficient in many ways and new, better drugs are needed to establish sustainable means to combat diseases caused by protozoan parasites that include malaria, trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis in man, and coccidiosis among others in animals. This ITN will train a new generation of European scientists in the requisites of preclinical drug discovery, combining academic excellence in innovation with industrial rigor and thus providing training from an industrial and academic perspective. The programme works on the premise that parasite metabolism offers a multitude of potential targets that can be exploited for drug design. Advances in genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics and protein chemistry, alongside computational systems biology are integral to the activities of the network. The programme is populated with projects at all levels of the preclinical drug discovery cascade to ensure ESRs and ERs are exposed to requirements and aspects of every step of this process. Therefore aspects of drug design, medicinal chemistry and small molecule screening will also be central to the programme. ESRs will perform research in two different laboratories providing them with multidisciplinary intersectoral training that we consider essential for the development of a highly skilled, knowledgeable new generation of researchers capable of innovation and application of research in a research area of global importance to human health..