Killing Malaria by Starving It

Researchers at St George’s Hospital Medical School have come up with a novel way to attack the malaria parasite — starve it of the sugar it needs.

The malaria parasite uses large amounts of glucose. The St. George’s researchers were the first to prove that the parasite uses a special transport protein to absorb the glucose. The importance of this finding is that if a way can be found to block that transport protein, the malaria parasite can be effectively starved.

St. George’s researcher Sanjeev Krishna said of the discovery,

This discovery proves for the first time that it is worth going after transport proteins of the malaria parasite and that parasites cannot live without this transporter working properly.

. . .

We are very excited about this research, as this new information gives us the potential to design new drugs against malaria.

The research of Dr. Krishna and his colleagues was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Sources:

Scientists starve malaria parasite. The BBC, June 4, 2003.

Parasite’s sweet tooth may provide malaria cure. Ananova, June 3, 2003.