New Drug Offers Hope in Fight Against Growing Malaria Resistance
From Goats and Soda : NPR
The threat of widespread malaria treatment failure looms as drug resistance increases, prompting a search for new solutions. as Dr. Jagoe puts it, “it’s better to have something in the pipeline, maybe not necessarily deploying, versus the house catches on fire and you’ve got nothing.” After over two decades of research, a potential breakthrough may be on the horizon.
Researchers recently presented findings at the American society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Toronto detailing the success of a new drug, GanLum, in clinical trials. Conducted across 12 African countries, the drug demonstrated over 97% effectiveness in treating malaria – a performance comparable to, and possibly exceeding, current standard treatments. Regulatory approval could provide a crucial new weapon against a disease responsible for approximately half a million deaths annually.
“It’s a big deal,” states Kasturi Haldar, a biologist at the University of Notre Dame with extensive malaria research experience, who was not involved in the study. “It’s also pretty timely.”
The urgency stems from the spread of artemisinin resistance, frist identified in southeast asia in the late 2000s and now impacting Africa, the continent most heavily affected by malaria. “Partial artemisinin resistance has been spreading quite aggressively across many parts of Africa,” explains David Fidock, a microbiologist at Columbia University, also uninvolved in the study. “We’ve been sounding the alarm that we must have new drugs to deploy,should resistance lead to treatment failure.[GanLum] will help stem that substantially.”
GanLum is a combination of two drugs: ganaplacide and lumefantrine.Ganaplacide,the novel component,was discovered by Novartis scientists after screening over 2.3 million molecules for antimalarial properties. It appears to function by disrupting the malaria parasite’s ability to survive within human red blood cells.
Laboratory tests showed ganaplacide’s ability to eliminate all known parasite forms, including those exhibiting mutations linked to artemisinin resistance. Importantly, it also targets the parasite stage responsible for transmission, a highly desirable characteristic as it can prevent further spread of the disease, along with treating infected individuals, according to Haldar.
Clinical trials involving over 16,000 adults and children (aged two years and older) across a dozen African countries compared GanLum to the current artemisinin-based standard of care, administered over three days. Results indicated comparable effectiveness between the two treatments,with GanLum showing a slight advantage. Both drugs produced similar side effects, including nausea and diarrhea, though the GanLum group experienced a higher incidence of vomiting.
While promising, GanLum still requires regulatory clearance before becoming available to patients, a process researchers estimate will take approximately a year and a half.Even with approval, it’s unlikely to instantly replace artemisinin-based treatments, which remain effective in many regions. Haldar notes,”But at this point,it looks good enough that it might very well be used where there’s a lack of responsiveness to the current [artemisinin-based] drugs.”
Ultimately, the introduction of GanLum could extend the effectiveness of both drug classes and help countries avoid the devastating increases in mortality seen when resistance renders existing treatments ineffective.
