By Kelly Chibale & Richard Gordon
More than 200 million people around the world suffered from malaria in 2017. Over 400,000 died. The vast majority – around 90% – were in Africa, where many are all too familiar with the devastating impact of the disease. Young children and pregnant women are the most vulnerable.
Protective measures can help significantly to reduce the burden. This includes spraying with insecticides and using mosquito nets. But 100% coverage using these methods is impossible. Until the disease is eradicated, availability of effective treatments is critical.
This is why drugs are critical to managing the disease. But even here new challenges are beginning to emerge. For example, in South East Asia, drug resistance to current first-line treatment has become a cause for concern. It threatens progress made in recent years against malaria. The only way to overcome this threat is to discover new agents against malaria that are safe, effective and affordable.
A collaborative effort between the University of Cape Town’s drug discovery and development centre and the Swiss-based non-profit organisation Medicines for Malaria Venture has spent the past ten years working this. The project is supported by the South African Medical Research Council and the country’s Department of Science and Innovation. The aim is to discover and develop medicines to help tackle the burden of the disease in endemic countries and support malaria eradication.
The collaboration is also contributing to the development of sustainable research capacity in African countries.
The joint projects arising from this collaboration embrace multidisciplinary activities. One example involves screening activities to identify exciting new chemical starting points. Another is to optimise new compounds through the drug discovery pipeline and deliver candidate compounds that can be researched further in clinical studies.
