By Laura Frykberg
Around a million people die from malaria each year, but with his contribution to a breakthrough drug, that is a statistic a Kiwi scientist is hoping to change with single molecule called 'immucillin g'.
The anti-malarial drug developed by Industrial Research Limited (IRL) has now passed its first stage of testing, piquing the interest of a pharmaceutical company.
“It’s about the same size as a caffeine molecule or nicotine, something like that. It’s made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms,” says Dr Gary Evans, IRL principle scientist.
Dr Evans says it stops malaria by starving the parasite of the DNA it needs to develop in the human body,
It has taken 10 years of research just to get to the testing stage, and the positive results have got New Zealand pharmaceutical companies interested
“New Zealand’s economic prosperity would benefit from any pharmaceutical manufacturing which could be developed here and grow from here,” says Medicines New Zealand general manager, Kevin Sheehy.
Historically the disease has been hard to prevent because it is constantly mutating, but Dr Evans says for now 'immucillin g' is their best bet.
“Maybe down the track there will be something on a fundamental level which will mean resistence will not occur, but I can’t see it at this point in time,” he says.
While Dr Evans says the molecule is a positive step towards curing malaria, developing it as a drug is still years away, and will take still more research.
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