News July

Drug Library Yields 'Promising' Malaria Therapy

Researchers who tested more than 2,000 drugs for activity against the malaria parasite say a commonly-used allergy drug holds promise for treating the disease.

The findings were published yesterday (2 July) in Nature Chemical Biology.

Research into drugs for diseases that mostly affect developing countries is time-consuming and hampered by a lack of funding.

One solution is to test collections of existing drugs for possible new applications, but such drug libraries are generally small.

So far they have included 2,687 drugs that have been approved for medical use or are being tested for approval.

The researchers screened these for compounds that harm the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.

One of the most promising candidates was astemizole, a drug used to treat allergic reactions. It is sold in generic form in more than 30 countries including Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.

The researchers tested astemizole in mice infected with one of two strains of malaria: one that is sensitive to the existing malaria drug chloroquine and one that is not.

At low doses, astemizole reduced the number of chloroquine-susceptible parasites by 81 per cent but was less effective against chloroquine-resistant malaria.

Jean-René Kiechel, project manager for the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, says the research shows that an "opportunistic approach… has potential for breakthrough".

Nick White, professor of tropical medicine at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and Mahidol University in Thailand, says astemizole's potential as an anti-malarial drug needs to be further investigated, but that the research is "a good start".

Source http://www.scidev.net/content/news/eng/