There is a great need for new drugs for parasitic diseases, such as malaria, cryptosporidiosis, African Sleeping Sickness, Chagas' disease, and leishmaniasis. Each year, these diseases sicken or kill over 200 million people. Though some pharmaceutical companies devote some research effort to discover drugs to cure some of these diseases there is little done given the need; the people with these parasitic diseases have little money to pay for medicine. Wes's research group uses emerging knowledge about the genomes of these parasites to aid in rational drug discovery. His group is also involved in discovering the molecular targets of cell-active compounds that are potential drugs. They have discovered promising anti-parasitic compounds, based on enzymatic targets from the genomes of these parasites, that show great promise as drug leads. Some of the most promising compounds are inhibitors that block kinases necessary for parasite growth. The group uses structure based drug discovery, in collaboration with X-ray crystallographers and chemists, and pharmacokinetic and toxicology information from the laboratory, to optimize compounds to become drug candidates for clinical development.