A research team led by Portland State University announced on May 12 the development of a new chemical compound that could help treat and prevent malaria, one of the most widespread infectious diseases globally.
Malaria causes about a quarter billion clinical cases and over half a million deaths each year. The disease is spread by mosquitoes carrying Plasmodium parasites, making it a major public health concern in many parts of the world.
Jane X. Kelly, project lead and research professor of chemistry at PSU and the VA Portland Health Care System, said her group has spent years developing antimalarial drugs. Their leading drug candidate, T111, has been under investigation for 15 years and is described as having the potential to become a single-encounter treatment for malaria. “That activity profile makes T111 a strong candidate to become a first-in-class Single Encounter Radical Cure (SERC), the kind of drug that could meaningfully change the trajectory of malaria elimination worldwide,” Kelly said.
The team’s study published in Nature Communications shows that T111 targets all three major life-cycle stages of the malaria parasite with one compound. Kelly explained that these stages include liver stage, blood stage, and sexual stage parasites. She said current treatments do not address all these stages in one drug: “With T111, a single treatment encounter could clear the parasite from all three life-cycle stages, including the dormant liver forms that cause relapse,” Kelly said. “No antimalarial currently in clinical use combines all of these properties in a single drug. Existing radical-cure agents such as tafenoquine and primaquine address dormant liver-stage parasites but have significant limitations and don’t cover the full life-cycle profile T111 does.”
The researchers have filed a provisional patent application for T111 with PSU and are testing it further in non-human primates alongside partners at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences.
Papireddy Kancharla, associate research professor at PSU and first author on the study, said improving manufacturing processes was also key: “Our goal has been to make the production process shorter, safer and less expensive, which is important for developing affordable new anti-malarial medicines,” he said. “So far, we’ve made tremendous progress on this project and want to see our drug molecule in the market in coming years.” The next steps will include studies required before human trials can begin followed by collaboration with pharmaceutical companies for further development.
The Nature Communications journal selected this study as part of its highlights on significant recent microbiology research.
