Malaria continues to pose a major global health threat, causing over 600,000 deaths annually out of approximately 240 million infections. The majority of these deaths occur among children under the age of five, with sub-Saharan Africa bearing the greatest burden of disease.
Due to the high burden of malaria in Africa, it is important for African-based scientists to take a leading role in malaria drug discovery. While the difficulties are formidable in Africa, strong progress has been made recently, as illustrated by H3D.
H3D has demonstrated a strong track record of antimalarial drug discovery with several chemical series discovered and being progressed in each stage of the drug development pipeline. A significant achievement was the discovery of the malaria clinical candidate (MMV390048) which reached phase II human trials in African patients. This is the first clinical candidate to come out of Africa.
Building on a decade-long partnership with the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) and the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), and a sustained collaboration with the Gates Foundation, our current malaria portfolio is aimed to deliver pre-clinical candidates for both chemoprevention and treatment of drug-resistant malaria. The drug candidates ideally should have long duration of activity and administered through a single, low dose oral drug or long-acting injectable, to provide the next generation of medicines for malaria that are accessible, simple to administer, affordable and safe.
H3D is part of the Malaria Drug Accelerator (MalDA), a consortium of 18 different research partners across the globe using innovative new techniques to deliver antimalarial lead compounds against a growing number of novel targets in Plasmodium.
In addition to our own research projects within these collaborations, H3D offers support for other researchers who wish to evaluate compounds for potential antiplasmodial activity. For more information on our available Malaria Biology assays please see here.
Key H3D Malaria publications and others see here:
- Paquet et al., Sci. Transl. Med. 9, eaad9735 (2017) 26 April 2017. doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aad9735
- John G. Woodland, André Horatscheck, Candice Soares de Melo, Godwin A. Dziwornu, Dale Taylor, Chapter Three - Another decade of antimalarial drug discovery: New targets, tools and molecules, Progress in Medicinal Chemistry, Elsevier, Volume 63, Issue 1, 2024, Pages 161-234. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pmch.2024.08.001
- Siqueira-Neto, J.L., Wicht, K.J., Chibale, K. et al. Antimalarial drug discovery: progress and approaches. Nat Rev Drug Discov 22, 807–826 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41573-023-00772-9
- Redhi D, Mulubwa M, Gibhard L, Chibale K, 2023. Integrating Pharmacokinetic–Pharmacodynamic Modeling and Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic Modeling to Optimize Human Dose Predictions for Plasmodium falciparum Malaria: a Chloroquine Case Study. Antimicrob Agents Chemother 67:e01345-22.https://doi.org/10.1128/aac.01345-22
