Teaching old drugs new tricks to stop malaria invasion in its tracks.
Malaria is a common and life-threatening disease endemic in large parts of the world. The emergence of antimalarial drug resistance is threatening disease-control measures that depend heavily on treatment of clinical malaria. The intracellular malaria parasite is particularly vulnerable during its brief extracellular stage of the life cycle. Wilson et al. describe a screen targeting these extracellular parasite stages and make the surprising discovery that clinically used macrolide antibiotics are potent inhibitors of parasite invasion into erythrocytes.See research article: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/13/52.
Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases and Department of Cellular Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA. vasant@uga.edu.
Vasant
V
Muralidharan
Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases and Department of Cellular Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA.
Boris
B
Striepen
D000818:Animals; D000962:Antimalarials / Q000494:pharmacology*; D017963:Azithromycin / Q000494:pharmacology*; D004912:Erythrocytes / Q000469:parasitology*; D004917:Erythromycin / Q000494:pharmacology*; D006801:Humans; D008288:Malaria / Q000188:drug therapy*; D010962:Plasmodium berghei / Q000187:drug effects*; D010963:Plasmodium falciparum / Q000187:drug effects*
D000962:Antimalarials; D004917:Erythromycin; D017963:Azithromycin