{"id":52002,"date":"2015-03-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/2015\/03\/13\/researchers-work-key-in-fight-against-malaria\/"},"modified":"2022-09-02T20:27:16","modified_gmt":"2022-09-03T01:27:16","slug":"researchers-work-key-in-fight-against-malaria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/2015\/03\/13\/researchers-work-key-in-fight-against-malaria\/","title":{"rendered":"Researcher’s work key in fight against malaria"},"content":{"rendered":"

A potential single-dose cure for malaria — a long-sought breakthrough against an illness that the World Health Organization estimates affected 198 million worldwide in 2013 — is a step closer to approval. And the key drug in the formula was discovered by a team led by a researcher at UNMC.<\/p>\n

Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) has announced that an independent safety monitoring board (ISMB) has recommended the recruitment of patients aged 2-5 to the ongoing Phase IIb clinical trial of the single-dose antimalarial drug combination. This development is “a vital step,” said MMV CEO David Reddy, Ph.D. Young kids are among the primary target population of the medicine. <\/p>\n

In 2013, the WHO estimates, 437,000 African children died before their fifth birthday due to malaria.<\/p>\n

Adult patients, and children aged 5-15, have been found to well tolerate the treatment, which combines the new, fully synthetic drug OZ439 with the established antimalarial piperaquine phosphate (PQP) in a single dose. <\/p>\n

OZ439 was discovered thanks to research led by Jonathan Vennerstrom, Ph.D., professor in the UNMC College of Pharmacy, during an MMV-funded drug discovery project from 2000-10. The UNMC team, including Yuxiang Dong, Ph.D., and Xiaofang Wang, Ph.D., collaborated with researchers from Australia’s Monash University and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute.<\/p>\n

MMV is a Swiss nonprofit backed heavily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.<\/p>\n

A pioneer on a previous, multi-dose antimalarial, Dr. Vennerstrom said the new combination’s single-dose nature would be “a significant advance.”<\/p>\n

People forget. Or they stop taking their medicine when they feel better. This can lead to relapses and drug-resistant strains, Dr. Vennerstrom said.<\/p>\n

“A single-dose cure would improve patient compliance considerably and would be a huge step forward for malaria treatment and its ultimate eradication,” said Peter Kremsner, M.D., scientific director of the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Gabon, one of the trial sites.<\/p>\n

The trial will continue at 10 sites in eight countries in Africa, Asia and South America. If well-tolerated by these children, the next group tested would be infants from 6 months to 2 years, another especially vulnerable and hard-hit population. <\/p>\n

Though it continues to make headlines whenever another clinical trial milestone is met, Dr. Vennerstrom’s contribution to the project — the drug discovery — is long over. He watches for updates like the rest of us.<\/p>\n

The work he does, “It’s passed on,” he once said, “like a baton.”<\/p>\n

He’s heartened to hear that it has gone from the lab, to the clinic, to those who need it most.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNMC’s researchers collaborated to discover synthetic drug currently in clinical trials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":43674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","department-college-of-pharmacy","department-unmc-today-todays-headlines","author_override-kalani-simpson-unmc-public-relations"],"yoast_head":"\nResearcher's work key in 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