South African new anti-malarial drug undergoes clinical trials

A new anti-malarial drug developed by South African scientists is undergoing clinical trials before it could be used to prevent the disease from killing almost a million lives a year around the world, a senior South African official said on Tuesday. The drug has the potential to become a single-dose cure for all strains of malaria and might also be able to block the transmission of the parasite from person to person, South African Minister of Science and Technology (SAMST) Naledi Pandor said. She was speaking at the launch of a new compound for further developing the drug at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where the drug was developed. The drug was last month selected by Switzerland's Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) for further development which would take about seven years. The SAMST has provided 25 million rand (about 297,000 U.S. dollars) for further developing the drug which has already been found to be a complete cure for animals infected by malaria. Medical trials have shown the drug could reduce the death rate by 50 percent. "When we tested this molecule in animals that are infected with parasites, with a single low dose of this molecule, we could cure the infection completely," said lead researcher Kelly Chibale, professor at the UCT's Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3-D) . He said the new drug is important, especially as others have proved ineffective in tackling parasites that have become drug resistant. If all goes well, the drug could expect to hit the market by 2020, according to Dr. Tim Wells, the MMV's chief scientific officer.