Malaria drug breakthrough from university researchers

RESEARCHERS at Cardiff University have discovered a new way of making a drug commonly used in the fight against malaria.

The method significantly reduces the time and cost taken to produce artemisinin, which is recommended by the World Health Organisation for treatment of all cases of severe malaria, and works by attacking all stages of the malaria parasite in the blood.

Discovered by Chinese scientist Tu Youyou, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in October 2015 for the find, the worldwide supply of artemisinin relies predominantly on the extraction of the product from the plant Artemisia annua.

Extracting the drug is a lengthy process, which consists of 13 steps, so chemists looked for a way of efficiently producing it in a laboratory.

Professor Rudolf Allemann, head of the university’s School of Chemistry and lead author of the research, said: “Our new method has essentially bypassed a number of key steps on the way to producing artemisinin.

“What we’re left with is a novel and powerful approach for producing the drug that does not rely on extraction from large amounts of plants. Our approach could reduce market fluctuations in the supply chain of artemisinin.”

The study is published in the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie