‘Keep developing new medication’

Dundee University’s regius professor at the School of Life Sciences has said the latest strain of resistant malaria is “disturbing” but work to develop new medication is already under way.

Sir Michael Ferguson is an expert in the fight against the disease which still kills hundreds of millions of people a year worldwide.

On the revelation that a strain of the disease resistant to current medication is spreading through South East Asia, he said: “It is very disturbing.

“The scientists behind this research are very well-known in the field so I am sure this is a reliable piece of work.

“The strain is in south-east Asia at the moment, but the big worry is if it gets to Africa, where it’s harder to prevent infections.

“The number of malaria cases has fallen in the last 10 years so something like this puts that good work at risk.

“If it gets to Africa we are going to be in a bad place.”

Mr Ferguson said it is “inevitable” for strains of malaria to become resistant to medication and that is why it is important for researchers to continually develop new drugs.

It happened with the cholorquine medication in the 1980s.

He added: “We’ve been here before so we understand the need to keep developing new medication. It’s a cycle as even new drugs that take over now will one day become useless.”

While he notes there is some disagreement over whether the resistant strain is destined to reach Africa, Mr Ferguson called for action nonetheless.

“There are some scientists who say it won’t travel to Africa but I don’t think this is something we can gamble with.

“Especially when most of the people dying of malaria are children under the age of five and pregnant women.

“We have seen this before with strains becoming resistant and those had managed to reach Africa.”

Researchers from Dundee University recently won Project of the Year by the Medicines for Malaria Venture for their work into preventing malaria from making its own protein – essentially killing the disease.

Mr Ferguson added: “There are two compounds being developed in Dundee at the moment. One is at the human testing stage, but the other is not there yet. It still needs a bit of work before getting to that stage, but that is the one that recently won project of the year.

“But that’s two compounds out of 25 being developed worldwide, so that quite a good contribution.”

Sir Michael Ferguson of Dundee University.