A team of scientists at University College Riverside, University College Irvine and Yale School of Medicine have begun trialling a new malaria drug. Today, they have published a new report detailing the process.
Following Spanish trials, MED6-189 has been found to be effective against one of the most vicious trains of malaria. Experts explained in the report, which was published in the online journal Science, that the new drug acts fast by blocking parasites and therefore avoiding infection.
Karine Le Roch, a professor of molecular, cell and systems biology at UCR, said: ‘Disruption of the apicoplast and vesicular trafficking blocks the parasite’s development and thus eliminates infection in red blood cells and in our humanized mouse model of P. falciparum malaria.
‘We found MED6-189 was also potent against other zoonotic Plasmodium parasites, such as P. knowlesi and P. cynomolgi.’
Likewise, Le Roch also outlined how and what his team made the new drug from.
‘Many of the best antimalarial agents are natural products or are derived from them. For example, artemisinin, initially isolated from the sweet wormwood plant, and analogues thereof, are critically important for treatment of malaria.
‘MED6-189 is a close relative of a different class of natural products, called isocyanoterpenes, that seem to target multiple pathways in P. falciparum. That is beneficial because had only one pathway been targeted; the parasite could develop resistance to the compound more quickly.’
Following the drugs creation, next the team plan to continue testing the medicine using a systems biology approach.
The research was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. Arguably, it couldn’t have come at a better time as it was recorded in 2022, almost 619,000 global deaths occurred as a result of malaria.
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