“Scientists Find New Antimalarial Drug Targets”

“Researchers have discovered crucial new processes that allow malaria parasites to escape red blood cells and infect other cells, offering potential new treatment targets. The team are already working with pharmaceutical companies to use this knowledge to develop new antimalarial drugs — a critical step in the battle against drug-resistant malaria.

“Over 400,000 people die of malaria each year, and resistance to common antimalarial drugs is growing,” says professor Mike Blackman, group leader at the Francis Crick Institute, who led the research. “We’re studying the deadliest malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, to try to find new drug targets that work in a different way to existing treatments.”

In the latest study, published in Nature Microbiology, the team have identified two key proteins that malaria parasites need to escape red blood cells and infect fresh cells. The research was done in collaboration with the Proteomics Science Technology Platform at the Crick as well as scientists at Birkbeck College, King’s College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.”

Source: Infection Control Today

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