New discoveries may help develop new antimalarial therapies

-- New findings on malaria parasite resistance-related proteins may help develop new antimalarial therapies and may also be used to enhance the effectiveness of existing antimalarial drugs, an international research team said in a paper published in the British journal Nature Communications.
malaria is an infectious disease caused by malaria parasites and is transmitted through mosquito bites. Increased resistance to malaria parasites poses a major threat to global malaria control.
A protein called PfCRT is key to the resistance of the malaria parasite to multiple drugs and is critical to its survival, but the scientific community has known little about how PfCRT works for years, the Australian National University said in a press release. To this end, an international team led by researchers at the university has conducted an in-depth study of the function of PfCRT and solved a number of puzzles, such as how PfCRT provides an amino acid source for malaria parasites by transporting peptides.
PfCRT could help develop drugs that inhibit it, said Royna Martin, a co-author of the study. Not only do these drugs kill malaria parasites, they can also be used in combination with other therapies to eliminate resistance caused by PfCRT, thereby restoring the efficacy of existing antimalarial drugs.
" treatment of malaria parasites in a variety of ways is critical to the fight against multidring-resistant malaria. Martin said.
World Malaria Report 2019, released late last year by the World Health Organization, there will be about 228 million malaria cases worldwide in 2018, with an estimated 405,000 people dying from the disease.