Identifying new drugs against malaria

What is it about?

Despite recent successful control efforts, malaria remains a leading global health burden. Alarmingly, resistance to current antimalarials is increasing and the development of new drug families is needed to maintain malaria control. Previously it has been established that certain carbohydrate molecules can block the replication of malaria by inhibiting infection of human red blood cells by the merozoite form of malaria. In this paper, we extended our previous studies by identifying new and more potent inhibitors of malaria, and identifying the structural features and composition of these molecules that are important for their antimalarial activity.

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Why is it important?

These studies have important implications for understanding how malaria merozoites infect human red blood cells, and how carbohydrate molecules could be used as the basis for the development of much-needed new anti-malaria drugs. Drug development could focus on developing specific carbohydrates as drugs, or use the knowledge of how specific carbohydrates inhibit malaria to or identify or design new compounds that have a similar action.