• The Cure for Malaria is Closer than you Think
    22 replies, posted
[quote=NPR]Scientists may have found a critical weakness in Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria. Researchers say the discovery provides a promising target for new malaria therapies. The weakness is related to a structure inside malaria cells called an apicoplast. About a decade ago, molecular biologist Joseph DeRisi of the University of California, San Francisco became interested in an organelle inside the malaria parasites' cells known as an apicoplast. No one was completely sure what the apicoplast did. Enter Ellen Yeh. She's a recent graduate of Stanford with an M.D. and a Ph.D. who came to work in DeRisi's lab. Yeh is interested in metabolic pathways. These are the biochemical steps things like apicoplasts use to make the chemicals they make. Actually, Yeh is more than just interested in metabolic pathways. "I love metabolic pathways," she says. Yeh started looking at the metabolic pathways in the parasite's apicoplasts. "There actually only seemed to be one pathway that the parasite really really needed. And that everything else it probably could find other ways of getting those products." To prove it, she created a colony of parasites that were missing their apicoplasts. Normally, without an apicoplast, the parasites would just die. But Yeh added back the chemical from the important metabolic pathway to the tubes the parasites were growing in. "It was a pretty amazing day in the lab when I walked in and those parasites were still alive with no apicoplasts, but because I had added that one chemical they were still living," she says. The work appears in the journal Plos Biology. Yeh's colleague DeRisi says knowing this is a critical chemical for the parasite is a game-changer. "Now we can design, or look for specific kinds of drugs that inhibit just this one thing instead of just shooting in the dark hoping that you find a drug that disrupts something that you hope might be essential," he says. In fact, DeRisi already has a good place to start: fosmidomycin, a new drug that targets the apicoplast. But Boris Striepen, a malaria researcher at the University of Georgia, says fosmidomycin is not a great drug, because it's excreted from the human body too fast. He says the new findings should make the search for better drugs much easier. Even so, Striepen says the malaria parasite isn't going to go down without a fight. "There is not one discovery that can be made and then that problem goes away and can be put to rest. I think it needs effort of new drugs to stay abreast." Now, apicoplasts are odd. They don't show up in most species, and we don't have them in our cells. They have their own DNA, separate from the parasite's main DNA. When scientists analyzed the apicoplasts DNA, they were astonished to find that it was most closely related to the DNA in algae. "It's actually thought that the malaria parasite incorporated an algal cell early on, and that the thing we call the apicoplast is the remnant of the algal cell," says Sean Prigge at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Institute . So a remnant of algae may help bring down one of the world's most deadly parasites.[/quote] [url=http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/08/31/140069350/a-remnant-from-algae-in-malaria-parasite-may-prove-its-weakness]Source[/url]
Finally. Now I won't have to go find pills every ten minutes in Far Cry.
what sort of last name is Yeh? or are they taking the piss
I'll wait for next year's 'closer than you think' article.
[QUOTE=Kokopelli13;32036909]Finally. Now I won't have to go find pills every ten minutes in Far Cry.[/QUOTE] I thought exactly this.
[QUOTE=Jookia;32037073]I'll wait for next year's 'closer than you think' article.[/QUOTE] "The cure for all diseases will be solved in 2012 on the count of the end of the world."
Read it too fast and thought it meant Malaysia. :wtc:
My brothers girlfriend is studying as a molecular biologist and currently she's studying different proteins in mosquitos that give them a resistance to malaria. I wonder if she helped with this discovery at all.
Quinine all day erryday.
[QUOTE=deathstarboot;32037156]"The cure for all diseases will be solved in 2012 on the count of the end of the world."[/QUOTE] Still worth it
I know this is kind of an apples and oranges comparison here, but does nobody remember that the pesticide DDT (known as one of the safest pesticides humanity has ever developed) had nearly wiped malaria out almost 50 years ago? Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that it's somehow okay to justify potential birth defects if it completely wipes out the disease, but it's always been something that's caused me to think "what if?" We had knocked malaria down to 29 cases per year instead of 3 million... Either way, if this drug works the way scientists hope, it's still great news.
Beating malaria will be a huge step towards developing sub-Saharan Africa to the same living standards as the modern world. Without malaria crippling villages and turning stagnant water into certain death for nearby communities, agriculture and industrialization alike will be able to progress much more rapidly.
[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;32041199]I know this is kind of an apples and oranges comparison here, but does nobody remember that the pesticide DDT (known as one of the safest pesticides humanity has ever developed) had nearly wiped malaria out almost 50 years ago? Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that it's somehow okay to justify potential birth defects if it completely wipes out the disease, but it's always been something that's caused me to think "what if?" We had knocked malaria down to 29 cases per year instead of 3 million... Either way, if this drug works the way scientists hope, it's still great news.[/QUOTE] yeah, malaria didn't become an issue until DDT was banned
[QUOTE=PelPix123;32043180]My friend can't get malaria. He has a rare form of anemia that makes his red blood cells EVER SO SLIGHTLY oval-shaped. Not enough to impede function in any way, but the malaria parasite won't attach to it, so they simply die of old age. I wonder if they could research the mechanisms behind his immunity and use it to supplement this. This is probably a more applicable thing to study, though. You can't exactly make a medication that changes red blood cell shape. Now, before 1/4 Life explodes into this thread and declares that I am, in fact, talking about him, I'll admit it first: 1/4 Life is a malaria-immune superman.[/QUOTE] You mean heterozygous sickle cell anemia right
[quote]Scientists may have found a critical weakness in[/quote] I was immediately interested after this bit.
[QUOTE=Kokopelli13;32036909]Finally. Now I won't have to go find pills every ten minutes in Far Cry.[/QUOTE] Looks like Far Cry 2 is going to be getting some new DLC
Tonic water actually acts as a vaccine against malaria, the quinine in it prevents you from getting it. In WW2 soldiers would drink it on a regular basis in the pacific jungles.
[QUOTE=SpaceGhost;32052162]Tonic water actually acts as a vaccine against malaria, the quinine in it prevents you from getting it. In WW2 soldiers would drink it on a regular basis in the pacific jungles.[/QUOTE] i'd still probably drink vodka tonics if they gave me malaria tbh
[img]http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/334336-far-cry-2-windows-screenshot-a-pill-a-day-keeps-malaria-away.jpg[/img] [img]http://fi.somethingawful.com/images/smilies/emot-byewhore.gif[/img]
Malaria sucks. My father works in Africa, and he caught it once. He's always checking his blood once he comes home to see if he has it.
[QUOTE=PelPix123;32043180]My friend can't get malaria. He has a rare form of anemia that makes his red blood cells EVER SO SLIGHTLY oval-shaped. Not enough to impede function in any way, but the malaria parasite won't attach to it, so they simply die of old age. I wonder if they could research the mechanisms behind his immunity and use it to supplement this. This is probably a more applicable thing to study, though. You can't exactly make a medication that changes red blood cell shape. Now, before 1/4 Life explodes into this thread and declares that I am, in fact, talking about him, I'll admit it first: 1/4 Life is a malaria-immune superman.[/QUOTE] Doesn't sickle cell anemia make the red blood cells more rigid and thus make it more difficult for them to pass through capillaries where they would normally stretch and squeeze? Doesn't this cause other problems?
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