A team of research scientists have discovered new ways in which the malaria parasite survives and develops in the victim’s bloodstream, paving the way for the development of new drugs to treat the deadly disease.

 

The research was published in Nature Communications and was led by Monash University’s Professor Christian Doerig and Professor Andrew Tobin of the University of Leicester in the UK.

 

The two researchers found that the disease, which is caused by the transmission of the malarial parasite, Plasmodium, possess a group of enzymes called protein kinases, which is crucial to the survival of the parasites in the human blood stream.

 

“If we stop these protein kinases from working then we kill the malaria parasites," Professor Doerig said.

 

"We are now looking for molecules that will prevent the protein kinases from doing their job. These drugs will provide a new way of killing the malaria parasite.”

 

Traditional methods of treating the disease have proven to be largely ineffective as the parasite quickly develops a resistance to pharmaceutical drugs.

 

“To avoid the catastrophic effects of widespread resistance to anti-malarial treatments, we need a continued pipeline of new anti-malaria drugs. Our discovery provides one avenue towards populating such a pipeline."

 

Collaborators included scientists at the University of Leicester in the UK and a team from the French Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm) working at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Molecular Parasitology in Glasgow and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

 

The research was funded by The Wellcome Trust, the European Commission, Inserm and EPFL.