New compound found to stop malaria with a single dose
Scientists say that they have discovered a new compound that stops malaria in animals with one low dose. This could provide a new avenue for researchers to develop more effective antimalarials as parasites become more resistant to existing drugs.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University in the US found that a single dose in mice prevented infection from developing for the duration of the 30-day study.The chemical compound targeted specific enzymes and fought early infection in the liver, as well as malaria parasites that were circulating in the blood.
Malaria is spread to humans by the bites of infected female mosquitoes and it is estimated that about half of the world’s population is at risk of catching the disease. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were 214 million new cases of malaria and 438,000 malaria deaths in 2015 alone.
Aside from avoiding bites by using insecticides and bed nets, people can protect themselves against malaria by taking antimalarial drugs. But existing treatments are less than perfect – people have to take repeated doses and the parasites that cause malaria are developing resistance to these drugs.
One type of malaria parasite along the Cambodia-Thailand border, P. falciparum, has already developed resistance to almost all available antimalarial medicines.
Dr.Nobutaka Kato and colleagues from MIT and Harvard searched a library of more than 100,000 compounds for a new treatment, looking for something that would work in an entirely new way than existing drugs.
The compound they found targets an enzyme called phenylalanyl-tRNA synthetase and appears to wipe out parasites before they can multiply in the liver and be released in bigger numbers into the bloodstream.
Lead researcher Professor Stuart Schreiber hopes the findings will lead to the discovery of better antimalarials in coming years.”We invite the scientific community to use this database as a jumping off point for their work developing antimalarial therapies,” he said.
The work was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Prof David Baker of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said the findings were exciting, adding that a single-dose antimalarial offers potential advantages like cost reduction and removal of certain issues such as patients not completing the course of treatment.
“One of the safety tests they ran on the new compounds gave results suggesting that there may be a degree of toxicity in human cells, but hopefully the chemists will be able to modify the compounds to remove this issue,” he said.