PHA-Exchange> Mystery of malaria drug resistance solved

[Claudio]

From: "George Lessard" <media at web.net>
>
> Mystery of malaria drug resistance solved
>
>
http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=1621&languag
e=1
> The discovery of how a malaria parasite resists a major anti-malaria
> drug could pave the way for a new generation of treatments. (Source:
> News-Medical.Net)
>
> In a major medical breakthrough, researchers in the United Kingdom
> and United States have discovered why the malaria parasite (
> Plasmodium falciparum ) has become resistant to chloroquine, one of
> the most effective anti-malarial treatments ever developed. The
> research is published today (24 September) in the journal Molecular
> Cell.
>
> Researchers at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the
> Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, found that a parasite
> protein creates a 'back door' out of which drugs can leak before they
> can kill the parasite. The researchers believe the protein could also
> play a role in the parasite's resistance to other drugs.
>
> The discovery opens the way for the development of new treatments for
> malaria, which the World Health Organisation estimates kills more
> than one million people a year. The researchers envisage a modified
> version of chloroquine that the parasite's 'back door' protein cannot
> remove.
>
>
> Reference: Molecular Cell 15, 867 (2004)
>
> Breakthrough discovery on why the malaria parasite has become
> resistant to chloroquine
>
> Scientists at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine have made a
> major breakthrough in discovering why the malaria parasite Plasmodium
> Falciparum, deposited in humans by the mosquito, has become resistant
> to chloroquine, one of the most successful drugs ever used to treat
> the disease.
>
> Their discovery, described as "a big piece in the jigsaw puzzle"
> paves the way for the creation of new drugs to save the lives of
> millions of people still infected with malaria every year, many of
> them children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.
>
> Once in the body, the malaria parasite multiplies and invades the red
> blood cells. A concentration of high levels of chloroquine can kill
> the parasites living in the cells. But the research of Professor
> Steve Ward and Dr Pat Bray, of the Liverpool School of Tropical
> Medicine, working with Dr David Fidock at the Albert Einstein College
> of Medicine in New York, has shown how a protein called PfCRT inside
> the parasite has enabled it to become resistant to important
> antimalarial drugs by creating a 'back door' and actually moving the
> drugs out of the parasite by leakage. They believe that PfCRT may be
> a 'master' gene that controls the parasite's resistance to a variety
> of antimalarial drugs.
>
> Malaria death rates have been rising in recent years, partly due to
> the parasite's resistance to widely used drugs like chloroquine so
> insights into the resistance mechanism are urgently needed.
>