Novel Drug Cures Mice With Drug-Resistant Malaria
Published: September 20, 2006
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers in Baltimore, Maryland say that they have found a new drug against malaria; they claim that it cured mice with a drug-resistant variation of the disease.
XC11, the new drug works by inhibiting the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, from reproducing.
New drugs for malaria are important since more than a million die from the disease every year; most of them happen to be children.
The mosquito-borne disease is becoming increasingly resistant to available treatment. For instance, the New Scientist says, the drug chloroquine is not effective in Africa any more.
Jun Liu and his team looked at a total of 175,000 compounds before spotting XC11. The substance varies in its mode of action from other treatments by not allowing the parasite to make certain proteins necessary for replication.
David Sullivan, who was a collaborator in the study, said that this drug has potential since it works by a different mechanism than most other drugs; that would mean that it is less likely to be vulnerable to resistant strains of mosquitoes.
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