1. Please give a summary of your research.
If you were developing next-generation drugs to combat drug-resistant malaria, a parasitic disease that kills >400,000 children and puts at risk >100 million pregnancies every year [1], what would you be looking for?
A drug that rapidly kills disease-causing parasites living inside human red blood cells would be a priority.
· I discovered that the safe and widely used antibiotic azithromycin has broad ‘quick-killing’ activity against blood stage malaria parasites – inhibiting red blood cell invasion (People’s Choice Award entry) and stopping growth and multiplication inside red cells [2, 3].
What about a drug where resistance develops slowly or not at all?
· In addition to quick-killing activity, azithromycin has a ‘slow-killing’ (death in 5 days) antimalarial action that targets special proteins obtained from an ancient bacteria [4]. Optimising azithromycin to act through two independent mechanisms of action, one that kills quickly and one that ‘mops-up’ break through parasites, would force the malaria parasite to mutate twice to become resistant, significantly reducing the risk of resistance developing [5].
A long-lasting drug with long-term efficacy to improve combination therapies.
· Azithromycin is maintained at an effective concentration in blood for weeks.
A drug that is potent at low concentrations.
· We have identified azithromycin analogues that kill parasites through both quick and slow killing activities [2] at concentrations well below those safely achievable for azithromycin in the blood.
A drug that is safe and inexpensive so children and pregnant women in developing countries can access treatment.
· Azithromycin has >25 years of clinical use in children and pregnant women. Azithromycin is inexpensive and has proven tractability to modification [6], providing a cost-effective antimalarial development strategy.
I aim to retarget azithromycin as a next-generation antimalarial with dual-modality that will maximise clinical benefits of combination therapies [7, 8] and minimise drug resistance.
2. Please include any additional details you would like to share
1. WHO: World Malaria Report 2016. Geneva, World Health Organization: WHO; 2016.
2. Wilson DW, Goodman CD, Sleebs BE, Weiss GE, de Jong NW, Angrisano F, Langer C, Baum J, Crabb BS, Gilson PR, et al: Macrolides rapidly inhibit red blood cell invasion by the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. BMC Biol 2015, 13:52.
3. Boyle MJ, Wilson DW, Richards JS, Riglar DT, Tetteh KK, Conway DJ, Ralph SA, Baum J, Beeson JG: Isolation of viable Plasmodium falciparum merozoites to define erythrocyte invasion events and advance vaccine and drug development. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2010, 107:14378-14383.
4. Sidhu AB, Sun Q, Nkrumah LJ, Dunne MW, Sacchettini JC, Fidock DA: In vitro efficacy, resistance selection, and structural modeling studies implicate the malarial parasite apicoplast as the target of azithromycin. J Biol Chem 2007, 282:2494-2504.
5. Hastings I: How artemisinin-containing combination therapies slow the spread of antimalarial drug resistance. Trends Parasitol 2011, 27:67-72.
6. Peric M, Fajdetic A, Rupcic R, Alihodzic S, Ziher D, Bukvic Krajacic M, Smith KS, Ivezic-Schonfeld Z, Padovan J, Landek G, et al: Antimalarial activity of 9a-N substituted 15-membered azalides with improved in vitro and in vivo activity over azithromycin. J Med Chem 2012, 55:1389-1401.
7. Friesen J, Silvie O, Putrianti ED, Hafalla JC, Matuschewski K, Borrmann S: Natural immunization against malaria: causal prophylaxis with antibiotics. Sci Transl Med 2010, 2:40ra49.
8. Shimizu S, Osada Y, Kanazawa T, Tanaka Y, Arai M: Suppressive effect of azithromycin on Plasmodium berghei mosquito stage development and apicoplast replication. Malar J 2010, 9:73.
Comments
Round: External Judging
Category: People's Choice Award
Votes |
Ranking |
|
---|---|---|
Member |
36 |
8 |
Michelle Boyle
Such an exciting and important project!