Experimental malaria drug may be a hot prospect

windeguy

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Jul 10, 2004
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Experimental malaria drug may be a hot prospect | Body & Brain | Science News

An experimental drug zaps the malaria parasite at multiple stages of infection, tests in mice show. And it may have an important upside: it doesn?t appear prone to drug resistance, the Achilles? heel of malaria medicines.
While preliminary, the findings offer welcome news in a field beset by uneven performance as the malaria protozoa subvert drug after drug. The situation has gotten so bad that the World Health Organization now recommends that doctors prescribe two drugs at once to increase the odds of killing the parasite without allowing a resistant form to emerge.
In the face of this gloomy picture, authors of the new study are decidedly optimistic. ?We do hope this is a game changer,? says biochemist Michael Riscoe of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. The report appears in the March 20 Science Translational Medicine.
Other scientists inject a note of caution. ?No matter how good the drug looks at this point, most likely the parasite will figure out how to become resistant to it,? says Roland Cooper, a pharmacologist at Dominican University of California, in San Rafael. ?The parasite is just a clever beast.?
But the experimental drug could still offer patients a benefit, he says. Since the drug candidate takes a long time to break down, it might last long enough in the body to clear infections. What?s more, the multipronged attack is unusual for malaria drugs. ?It?s just exciting to have a drug look this good,? he says.
 

zoomzx11

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Jan 21, 2006
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other bit of good news is that researchers have discovered how to make changes in eye color in mosquitoes. Does not sound like much but its an opening into making genetic mutations that could finally rid humanity of one of its biggest killers.