Cancer medication helps to fight against malaria: Study

A group of UCF researchers are looking to use cancer pharmaceuticals to hasten the development of fresh, life-saving malaria treatments because the disease is getting more and more resistant to existing medications. The findings of the study were published in the ACS Infectious Diseases journal. Malaria, one of the most prevalent infectious diseases in the world, is a potentially fatal condition brought on by parasites of the Plasmodium species and spread through the bite of infected mosquitoes. It causes more over 600,000 fatalities annually, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. Around 80% of these fatalities involve youngsters under the age of five. “Over time, genetic mutation of the malaria parasite makes it resistant to current drugs,” Chakrabarti says. “The World Health Organization reported that malaria parasites are increasingly becoming resistant to the current therapy used to treat malaria, which was discovered in the 1990s. So, new and more effective drugs for malaria are long overdue as about 30 years have gone by since we have had a new class of compounds in the market against malaria.” But drug discoveries can take years, even decades, Chakrabarti explained, as compounds go through many phases of testing for efficacy and safety.