Fast working malarial drug identified by Astrazenica Bangalore

The candidate drug triaminopyrimidine (TAP) was identified in treating malaria within shot period of time. In laboratory tests conducted by Astrazenica Bangalore scientists, this molecule has shown that it was fast acting and remained in the blood for an extended period of time, creating the possibility of a single-dose treatment.

The project received the backing of the Switzerland-based nonprofit foundation, Medicines for Malaria Venture. “Drug discovery is a rigorous and expensive endeavor with a high rate of attrition. To put it in perspective, we screened around 5,00,000 small molecules from the AZ collection and prioritized TAPs as promising lead series for further evaluation. Further medicinal chemistry optimization of TAPs resulted in selection of MMV253 from TAPs series as a candidate drug with ideal properties like novel chemical class, novel mechanism of action, fast kill in-vitro and in-vivo, predicted long half-life in humans and good safety margins in rats and guinea pigs. Since the skill sets were spread across the globe, coordinating and getting the right experiment done at the shortest possible time at a reasonable cost was a real challenge”, said Dr Sambandamurthy.

As existing drugs have a limited effect in humans with a half-life of not more than two hours which results to gain strength in parasites. This calls for more doses to deal with the infection. To bring this down, the new drug is found to be effective in treating the malarial disease.

AW: Lizitha