One of the oldest and deadliest diseases, malaria caused more than 627,000 deaths in 2020. A new treatment based on a drug initially developed to fight cancer has shown considerable promise.
Currently, there is no evidence that this highly effective antimalarial can treat COVID-19 – and the threat of drug resistance should deter us from using it indiscriminately.
Pharmaceutical companies focus on small molecules they’ve devised – and can easily patent. But nature’s already come up with many antibacterial compounds that drug designers could use to make medicines.
While some ancient therapies proved effective enough that they are still used in some form today, on the whole they just aren’t as good as modern antimicrobials at treating infections.
The drug partly responsible for more than halving the rate of malaria over the last 30 years and which won this year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has a long history of use.
The 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine went partly for research done during the Chinese Cultural Revolution based on traditional Chinese medicine. Here’s the story of Project 523.
The 2015 Nobel Prize in medicine went to research on remedies derived from natural compounds. Academia is continuing the fight against ‘neglected’ diseases by similarly hunting for new drugs in nature.
The first Chinese Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded for work based on traditional Chinese medicine. Will traditional medical knowledge now share the spotlight with evidence-based medicine?
Scientists in France have found how the genes of the malaria parasite adapt to become resistant to artemisinin, one of the most effective remaining antimalarial drugs. Their discovery exposes a serious…