Keck Foundation, as well as funding from government agencies in the United States (the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Singapore (Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR)). In addition to in-kind contributions by the pharmaceutical company Novartis (including its decade-old Novartis Malaria Initiatives) and the scientific expertise of scientists in academic laboratories around the world, the research was made possible by the support of the nonprofit organizations Medicines for Malaria Venture, the Wellcome Trust, and the W. The current study is the result of one such partnership.
To help surmount this barrier, concerned individuals have formed public-private partnerships to help spur research on much-needed treatments. While some 40 percent of the world's population lives in malaria-infected areas, little economic incentive for pharmaceutical companies to develop new treatments exists, since malaria-infected areas correspond with the some of the world's most impoverished nations.
The need for new treatments is made more urgent by the spread of drug-resistance to current medications. According to the World Health Organization, in 2008 there were 247 million cases of malaria and nearly one million deaths - mostly among children living in Africa. The disease is caused by Plasmodium parasites, transmitted through the bite of infected mosquitoes.ĭespite a century of effort to globally control malaria, the disease remains endemic in many parts of the world.
Malaria is a nasty and often fatal disease, which may lead to kidney failure, seizures, permanent neurological damage, coma, and death. "It has a lot of encouraging features as a drug candidate, including an attractive safety profile and potential treatment in a single oral dose." "We're very excited by the new compound," said Elizabeth Winzeler, a Scripps Research associate professor and member of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) who led the research with Thierry Diagana of the Novartis Institute of Tropical Diseases. The research was published on September 3, 2010, in the journal Science.
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