Scottish scientists identify possible new anti-malaria drug

Scottish scientists have discovered an "exciting" new compound that could be developed to provide a single dose treatment of malaria, a milestone in the fight against the disease that kills some 627,000 people every year.
The compound developed in the Drug Discovery Unit at Dundee has been selected by Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), following a positive recommendation by its Expert Scientific Advisory Committee, to enter pre-clinical development.
"This compound has impressive antimalarial properties. It has potential for a single dose treatment of malaria. It also has the possibility to protect people from getting malaria in the first place and in stopping malaria being spread from infected people to others (a feature known as transmission-blocking)," said professor Ian Gilbert, Chair of Medicinal Chemistry at Dundee and one of the project leaders.

Dr Kevin Read, co-project leader and also based at Dundee, said: "We are very excited by this compound which belongs to a different chemical class to current antimalarial drugs."
This compound will now undergo scale-up and further safety testing for it to enter human clinical trials within the next 18 months, he said.
Every year, there are over 200 million malaria cases across the globe, resulting in about 627,000 deaths. A majority of the victims are children under the age of five while pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to the disease.

The DDU team has been working with Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) to identify potential new treatments for malaria, the Dundee University said in a statement.

This project began when one of the DDU collections of compounds was screened against the parasite that causes the disease.
Identifying a compound like this is no small feat, said Dr Paul Willis, one of MMV's Drug Discovery Project Directors.
"It's a great achievement, particularly given the exciting properties of the compound, which give it potential for use in the treatment, prevention and transmission-blocking of malaria," he said.