NIH study identifies new targets for anti-malaria drugs

Thursday, October 26, 2017

The deadliest malaria parasite needs two proteins to infect red blood cells and exit the cells after it multiplies, a finding that may provide researchers with potential new targets for drug development, according to researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. Their study appears in the latest issue of Science.

Plasmodium falciparum, the species of parasite that causes the most malaria deaths worldwide, has developed drug-resistance in five countries in Southeast Asia.

In the current study, researchers sought to uncover the role of plasmepsins IX and X, two of the 10 types of plasmepsin proteins produced by P. falciparum for metabolic and other processes. They created malaria parasites that lacked plasmepsin IX or X under experimental conditions and compared them to those that had the two proteins.