Reading University researcher aims to make anti-malarial drugs more affordable
Involved in £400,000 project to investigate cost-effective production of artemisinin
A researcher from the University of Reading in the UK has received funding for a project to fight malaria.
Dr Geoff Brown, from the University of Reading’s Department of Chemistry, is beginning a £400,000 three-year project funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council that could prove vital for the developing world in its ongoing battle against malaria. His research aims to make anti-malarial drugs more affordable in Third World countries where more than 1.5 million people die of the disease every year.
Facilitating the research is the University’s new Chemical Analysis Facility (CAF), a £4.5m centre for chemical analysis, which includes four Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometers. These will allow Dr Brown to perform the detailed analysis required for his research.
The traditional forms of drugs used to treat malaria infection were quinine-based, but malaria has become resistant to such drugs in many parts of the world. Using the CAF’s facilities, Dr Brown aims to be the first researcher to understand the way in which the Chinese Wormwood plant produces artemisinin, an antimalarial drug effective against quinine-resistant malaria. This research will help pharmaceutical companies to produce artemisinin more cost effectively.
According to World Health Organisation figures, a course of treatment with artemisinin costs US$3.40, rising to US$7.30 for some artemisinin combination therapies. By comparison, other antimalarial treatments can cost as little as US$0.08.
‘Trying to understand how the Chinese wormwood plant assembles artemisinin at the molecular level is a difficult challenge, which has never been fully resolved, even after almost 30 years of research,’ said Dr Brown.
‘The state-of-the art instrumentation in CAF is now helping us finally to solve this difficult problem, providing basic knowledge which can be translated into cheaper and more reliable methods for the production of artemisinin in the future.’
One option for producing a cheaper version of the drug is through biofermentation, which uses a microorganism, such as yeast, to produce large quantities of a drug during the fermentation process.