Category Archives: Malaria

The nobel prize for physiology and medicine 2015: William C. Campbell, Satoshi Ōmura, Youyou Tu

Drug, In General, Malaria,

This morning the Nobel prize in physiology and medicine 2015 was awarded to research on parasites and malaria.  Willaim C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura share one half for their work on parasites; Youyou Tu gets the other half for identifying new malaria drugs from Traditional Chinese Medicine. I have to eat my hat since I could never imagine something from Traditional Chinese Medicine could be really effective, much less be awarded the Nobel prize, but there it is and I might be more cautious in the time to be.

You have to read the paper of Youyou Tu (2004) where he summarizes his work since his graduation in 1969. It is chemical science starting with material out of the prescription book of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Qinghaosu was the first product they found and that is now chemically modified to give much more potent anti-Malaria drugs.

Congratulation to this achievements!

Fig.1:Artemisine - QINGHAOSU
Artemisine – QINGHAOSU

New Malaria drug with DDD107498

Biochemistry, Malaria

200 millions of cases and more than 500000 death are worth every effort to deal with the world wide pest named malaria. A report in nature from a multicentric group with the Welcome Trust and Glaxo has found a new drug with the so-far non-attractive name DDD107498, which has excellent non-clinical parameters. It is drug specifically active against the translation elongation factor 2 (eEF2) of Plasmodium falciparum . 

DDD107498

A patent for the drug is filed (PCT/GB2009/002084).