A new method to combat malaria, which sees the disease turn against itself, could offer an effective treatment for hundreds of millions of people around the world.
The University of Melbourne-led research published today in Science has found an anti-malarial compound that does not harm mammals' cells.
Professor Leann Tilley is from the Bio21 Institute at the University of Melbourne and is one of the co-lead authors.
Professor Tilley said that it works by a reaction-hijack mechanism.
Imagine a stealth weapon that can be used to launch a self-destruct attack on your vehicle, and then slam on the brakes. There is a particular chink in the machinery that the malaria parasites use to reproduce themselves.
There is a lot of work to be done to fine- tune what we've discovered, but these results are really encouraging in the search for new anti-malarials.
Medicines for Malaria Medicine, the peak international body for antimalarial drug development, and research labs across five continents collaborated with Takeda Pharmaceuticals to identify the compound that was used in the test.
After entering the parasites, it attached itself to an acid and attacked the machinery of the synthesis of the proteins. Human cells are not vulnerable to attack.
In tests using both human blood cultures and an animal model of Malaria, the team found that the parasites that were killed were resistant to the current drugs.
It was shown that the compound was active against all stages of the lifecycle, meaning it could be used to treat and prevent diseases.
It shows how important it is to stop the spread of Malaria.
Malaria kills more than 600,000 people every year in Africa and Southeast Asia. Increasing levels of resistance to antimalarials has led to an impending crisis, with breakthrough drugs desperately needed.
The team was ready to move forward with the development of new antimalarial drug candidates based on the findings.
This is just the beginning. There is a chance that we can find drugs that target a range of deadly infectious diseases. She said that the work opens up a number of new drug discovery avenues.
More information: Stanley C. Xie et al, Reaction hijacking of tyrosine tRNA synthetase as a new whole-of-life-cycle antimalarial strategy, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abn0611 Journal information: Science
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