Australian scientists discover possible new treatment for malaria

[Guest guest]

With my thanks to Mike for sending it my way.>>Malaria, like any other, if you like, organism or parasite needs sustenance, needs a food source. And malaria's food source is blood and essentially the malaria parasite can break down blood proteins which it needs to thrive and reproduce and what we're targeting is the final stage of that digestive process.So basically we're putting if you like a gastric band on it. And we've used structural biology and drug design to develop an approach to basically inhibiting the malaria's digestive machinery.<<Oh great! A comment I just read on it:"…and, I know, I’m just being neurotic, paranoid and psychotic—and demonstrating a phenomenal display of scientific ignorance—but is there any reason to get a little queasy at the notion of parking a GMO starvation virus inside of the malaria parasite which gets implanted in humans by one of the worlds most ubiquitous delivery systems, the mosquito??? Yeah, I know…dumb question…"And the fact that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is involved doesn't inspire a lot of trust either....=======http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2481431.htmAustralian scientists discover possible new treatment for malariaPM - Tuesday, 3 February , 2009  18:46:00Reporter: Timothy McDonaldMARK COLVIN: Malaria is one of the world's biggest killers. Hundreds of millions of people are infected. Each year, more than a million die, many of them children under the age of five. What's more, there are growing fears that the disease is becoming resistant to the available drug treatments.Now a group of Australian scientists say they've made a discovery that could lead to new and more effective drugs.Timothy McDonald reports.TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Malaria passes from one person to another through infected mosquitoes. Once it's in the body, it multiplies in the liver, and invades red blood cells. Then come the headaches, the nausea and the vomiting. Without treatment, it will disrupt the blood supply to vital organs and can even cause death.Professor James Whisstock from Monash University says the most effective way of killing the malaria parasite may be to starve it.JAMES WHISSTOCK: Malaria, like any other, if you like, organism or parasite needs sustenance, needs a food source. And malaria's food source is blood and essentially the malaria parasite can break down blood proteins which it needs to thrive and reproduce and what we're targeting is the final stage of that digestive process.So basically we're putting if you like a gastric band on it. And we've used structural biology and drug design to develop an approach to basically inhibiting the malaria's digestive machinery.TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Professor Whisstock is leading a team of researchers based at several Australian Universities who hope that this discovery may lead to new treatment options.Several drugs are already used to treat the illness, but there's increasing concern about drug resistance. He says this new approach may prove to be more effective. JAMES WHISSTOCK: A lot of the current drugs target how the malaria parasite actually enters the red blood cell, and that type of thing and one of the problems with malaria as you probably know is drug resistance. So you've got this reservoir of drug resistant malaria growing and so you need a lot of different weapons in your arsenal. The dream is a one-shot cure and this particular approach one hopes that basically we may be able to get to a point where it is efficacious in that way.TIMOTHY MCDONALD: There are several different strains of malaria, and Professor Whisstock says he's hopeful his team will be able to develop drugs that will treat them all.JAMES WHISSTOCK: I mean ideally what you want is something that the parasite needs, that is very different from something present in the host, ie., the human, and that will, if you like, is similar across all the different forms of the parasite. And looking at the available data that we have, I think that there's a very good chance that this will be efficacious across other different species.TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Malaria has the greatest impact on poor countries. Africa is the most severely affected, but the illness is also strikes closer to Australian shores. Southeast Asia suffers a large number of cases, and malaria is particularly prevalent in Papua New Guinea and East Timor.Professor Whisstock says it's early days yet, but he hopes his team will be able to develop drugs that are both cheap and effective. JAMES WHISSTOCK: We hope so. I mean there's a huge effort round the world; I mean the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, other major funding bodies, major effort to basically target this parasite and to develop affordable therapeutics. Now it's early days for us, we don't know I guess how much something is going to cost until we try to develop it and take it further, but I'm really excited about this. It's a different approach to killing this beast and hopefully we'll be able to take it forward into the clinic in the future.MARK COLVIN: Professor James Whisstock ending Timothy McDonald's report. =====In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. 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