A new approach to develop antimalarial drugs discovered through international collaboration
Professor Leann Tilley and colleagues from the Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology are co-leading an international collaboration, which includes Takeda Pharmaceuticals, that has discovered a new way to develop antimalarial drugs.
600,000 deaths a year are attributed to malaria.
The international team has discovered that nucleoside sulfamates can cause malaria parasite enzymes to self-destruct during protein synthesis. It is expected that these chemicals will be effective for both treating and preventing transmission of the disease.
As malaria parasites start to develop resistance to existing antimalarial treatments, this discovery marks an important milestone and will form the basis of the development of a new antimalarial drug candidate.
The new focus for the international team is to optimise absorption and distribution of the compound in the body. It is hoped that this class of nucleoside sulfamates will open new drug discovery pathways for other diseases like cancer, neurodegenerative disease, metabolic syndromes and autoimmune disorders.