Liverpool Awarded £1.4M to Develop New Malaria Drug

Scientists at the University of Liverpool and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) have been awarded £1.4 million from the Medical Research Council (MRC) to develop a new drug for the treatment of malaria.

Malaria poses a serious global health threat with approximately 3 billion people at risk of the disease and around half million deaths per year (mainly in children and pregnant women), at a cost of ~ 20 billion USD in lost GDP.

The Liverpool team, which consists of medicinal chemists and parasitologists, will collaborate with an international consortium that includes the Medicine’s for Malaria Venture (MMV, Geneva), Imperial College and the University of Milan to develop the new drug treatment.

The primary target of this drug discovery project is the parasite Plasmodium falciparum (Pf), the pathogen that causes malaria.

The research team will develop novel drugs that inhibit two key malarial protease enzymes known as Plasmepsins IX and X, both of which are required for several stages of the parasite’s life cycle which include the liver, blood and mosquito stages of parasite development.

The multi-stage inhibitory activity coupled with a unique mechanism of inhibition will result in a lowered propensity for resistance development, making these drugs highly attractive targets for drug development.

Professor Paul O’Neill, a medicinal chemist at the University of Liverpool, is leading the programme, said: “The Liverpool medicinal chemistry team has already identified molecules with exceptional enzymatic and antimalarial potency (<1 pM) in vitro and have developed medicinal chemistry strategies that will deliver a late lead for progression into an effective oral treatment for malaria.”