Discovery could lead to new malaria drugs
|
|
Unusual “wiring” in the cells of the malaria parasite could be a key to developing new treatments for the disease that kills millions of people each year, scientists said on Wednesday.
Two teams of researchers in the United States have discovered that sets of proteins, which are essential for cells to function and communicate with each other, interact differently in the Plasmodium falciparum parasite than in other organisms.
“We expected Plasmodium to be different,” said Taylor Sittler, who worked on the research at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD).
“But statistically speaking, when we started looking at the protein networks, the degree of dissimilarity went far beyond what we expected,” he added in a statement.
By understanding the differences in how sets of proteins in the parasite work, the researchers hope to identify novel drug targets to fight malaria, the third-biggest cause of infectious disease deaths in the world after tuberculosis and AIDS.
Finding new drugs against the disease is vital because the parasite has developed resistance to anti-malaria treatments and there is no vaccine.
Malaria, which is transmitted by the bite of an infected female mosquito, occurs in more than 100 countries. It kills between 1 million and 2.7 million people each year. Ninety percent of deaths occur in young children in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Health Organisation.
Sittler and scientists at UCSD discovered the differences in the protein networks by comparing the malaria parasite to yeast, a nematode worm, the fruit fly and a bacterium that causes ulcers in humans. The research is published in the science journal Nature.
Their study was based on work done by Professor Stanley Fields and researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle who identified 2,846 unique protein interactions in the parasite.
They concentrated on proteins in the parasite involved in infecting human red blood cells. After a person is bitten by an infected mosquito, the parasite multiplies in the liver and blood stream and causes symptoms such as fever, chills and headache.
“The demonstration that the Plasmodium protein network differs significantly from those of other model organisms is an intriguing result that could lead to the identification of novel drug targets for fighting malaria,” said John Whitmarsh, of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, which partially funded the research.
SOURCE: Nature, November 3, 2005.
Print Version
Tell-a-Friend comments powered by Disqus
