Compounded by global food and water shortages as well as climate change, many parasites have a devastating and long-term impact on animals and humans worldwide. The control of many parasitic diseases is often compromised by inefficacy of current treatments, poor diagnostic tools, a lack of effective vaccines against the vast majority of parasites and the emergence of resistance in some parasites against drug treatments. Unlocking the fundamental molecular biology of key pathogens, employing -omic and bioinformatic technologies is providing an improved understanding of the molecular biology of parasites, which will likely assist in discovering new interventions. Some of our work has been focused on developing a pipeline for the discovery of new anti-parasitic drugs. Recently, we developed a practical and cost-effective whole-parasite assay for the screening of chemicals. This assay relies on an automated image analysis algorithm to detect motility-inhibition without segmentation; it achieves high levels of repeatability and low levels of intra- and inter-assay variability, and has major advantages over conventional methods (such as larval development and migration inhibitionmethods), particularly in terms of ease of use, accuracy of results, throughput, time and cost. In public-private partnerships, we have screened thousands of curated chemicals and identified a small number of molecules that have substantial inhibitory effects on nematode motility and/or development. Some of these compounds show considerable promise for hit-to-lead optimization and repurposing for use against parasitic worms. Although the present assay has been used for drug screening, it has major potential to be used for other applications on a range of metazoan organisms.