Purdue Researcher Battling Malaria with Cancer Drug
Philip Low is the Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University
(Purdue University photo/John Underwood)
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA professor of chemistry at Purdue University who is leading an international team of researchers says a cancer drug is also highly effective in treating malaria. Philip Low says in Phase 2 clinical trials, adding the drug Imatinib to standard malaria therapy clears all malaria parasites from 90% of patients within 48 hours and from 100% of patients within three days.
Low says patients saw fevers reduce in less than half of the time experienced by similar patients treated with the standard therapy.
The standard malaria treatment is piperaquine plus dihydroartemisinin.
“When we discovered the ability of Imatinib to block parasite propagation in human blood cultures in petri dishes, we initiated a human clinical trial where we combined Imatinib with the standard treatment used to treat malaria in much of the world,” Low said.
Imatinib was originally produced by Novartis for the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia and other cancers.
Low says it works by blocking specific enzymes involved in the growth of cancers.
“Because we’re targeting an enzyme that belongs to the red blood cell, the parasite can’t mutate to develop resistance — it simply can’t mutate proteins in our blood cells,” said Low. “This is a novel approach that will hopefully become a therapy that can’t be evaded by the parasite in the future. This would constitute an important contribution to human health.”
Malaria is caused by a single-cell parasite, which is carried by mosquitoes. The World Health Organization estimates 409,000 people died from malaria in 2019 with two thirds of the deaths in children under the age of five.