Drugs for malaria: something old, something new, something borrowed

Malaria was estimated to cause 800,000 deaths and 225 million cases worldwide in 2010. Worryingly, the first-line treatment currently relies on a single drug class called artemisinins, and there are signs that the parasite is becoming resistant to these drugs. The good news is that new technology has given us new approaches to drug discovery. New drugs generated this way are probably 10-15 years away from the clinic. Other antimalarials that may offer hope include those rehabilitated after not being used for some time, those that act as inhibitors of resistance mechanisms, those that limit infection while allowing protective immunity to develop, and those which are drugs borrowed from other disease treatments. All of these offer new hope of turning the tables on malaria. In parallel with the effort to develop vaccines that interrupt malaria transmission, drugs that target the parasite during transmission to the mosquito or during its pre-erythrocytic development in the liver, may allow us to terminate the parasite’s spread.