We will develop a low cost disposable test for rapidly diagnosing malaria in low resource settings. This test will be based on direct molecular detection of malaria RNA in unprocessed blood to determine which malaria strains are present in
This project addresses the problem of hundreds of antibiotics being available on the market but only a few are effective to treat tuberculosis. Developing new drugs is a long (10-15 years) and expensive (~$800 millions) process. Identification of synergistic combinations using drugs approved for other therapeutic applications can allow the introduction of new tuberculosis therapies in shorter time. Follow Santiago Ramon-Garcia on Twitter @s_ramongarcia"
This project will harness the potential of unlicensed drug shop owners to recognize malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea, and to deliver appropriate diagnostics and treatment that is affordable and accessible to families, helping to reduce Uganda's high death rate among children under five. Private drug shops, though poorly regulated, have proliferated in Uganda, offering a channel through which rudimentary help can be delivered.
Melvin Reichman of the LIMR Chemical Genomics Center Inc. in the U.S., working with Vicky Avery of the Eskitis Institute for Cell and Molecular Therapies in Australia, will develop and validate a new drug screening approach called Ultra-High Throughput Screening for Synergy (uHTSS) to discover new drug combinations from the Tres Cantos anti-malarial set for the treatment of malaria.
Joseph DeRisi of the University of California, San Francisco in the U.S. will generate a strain of apicoplast-free P. falciparum parasites to identify anti-malarial compounds from the Malaria Box that specifically target this organelle, which is essential for malaria parasite survival.
Choukri Ben Mamoun of Yale University in the U.S. will work to provide proof-of-principle that a new technology for down-regulating the expression of genes in the malaria-causing parasite P. falciparum can be used to identify specific drug targets. Antimalarial compounds in the Malaria Box will be screened against altered parasite strains to determine modes of action and to identify specific cellular targets to be pursued in future drug development.
Manuel Llinás of Pennsylvania State University in the U.S. will characterize the 400 candidate anti-malarial compounds in the so-called "Malaria Box" by mass spectrometry to help select those likely to be the most effective drugs for clinical development. The Malaria Box is a collection of compounds that display some anti- parasitic activity, but how they work and whether they would make valuable new anti-malarial drugs are unknown. They will analyze red blood cells infected with the malarial parasite P.
Dyann Wirth of the Harvard School of Public Health in the U.S. is building a platform to identify combinations of anti-malarial compounds that inhibit the development of drug resistance, which is a major barrier to combatting the disease. Their approach involves predicting how the Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasite will evolve to become resistant to a specific anti-malarial compound, and then designing a second compound that will target these resistant parasites.