Phase IIB Malaria trial gets underway
Immtech International has begun in its Phase IIb trial of the oral drug DB289 to treat malaria. The study will enroll 120 patients with uncomplicated plasmodium falciparum malaria at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases at Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand.
Immtech International has begun in its Phase IIb trial of the oral drug DB289 to treat malaria. The study will enroll 120 patients with uncomplicated plasmodium falciparum malaria at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases at Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand.
The trial will compare the effectiveness of various three-day dose regimens of DB289 given alone (as mono-therapy) and in combination with artesunate (a drug for treating malaria that is extracted from the wormwood plant). For comparison purposes, a sepa-rate control group will receive a combination of the drugs artesunate and mefloquin, which is the standard treatment for malaria in Thailand. All patients will be treated and monitored for a total of 28 days.
The urgent need for new, more effective drugs is driven primarily by the increasing resistance of malaria parasites to commonly available antimalarial drugs. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal (April 25, 2005), managers from the World Bank said that: 'the international lender will provide $300m to $500m in loans and grants to fight malaria over the next five years.'
The market for anti-malaria drugs consists of a population of 2.6 billion people living in the developing countries in Africa, Asia and South America. The WHO estimates that 300-500 million new clinical cases of malaria occur globally and result in 1.5 million to two million deaths per year. The most significant problem is in children under the age of five in Africa, where approximately one million children infected with ma-laria die each year.