Artemisinin, a drug extracted from the sweet wormwood plant, is the most effective treatment for malaria ever discovered. Every year, millions of doses of artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) are donated to Africa and Asia, greatly reducing the worldwide burden of the parasitical disease. But extracting artemisinin is expensive and because it takes time to cultivate the plant there are often bottlenecks in supply.
But Peter H Seeberger, the director of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, has just announced that he and colleague François Lévesque have discovered a simple and cost-effective way of synthesising artemisinin from the waste products of the plant. Their discovery has the potential to make the drug more affordable for the 225 million people affected by malaria every year.
Artemisinin belongs to the endoperoxide class of anti-malarial drugs and has been called a beautiful molecule, but why is it such bad news for the malaria parasite?
Artemisinin consists of four rings closely tied together. One of the rings is bridged via two oxygen atoms that sit next to each other, but the bond is not very stable and likes to break down. Artemisinin acts on the blood stage of the malaria parasite. Although the exact... Source/Origin >> Read More
