This is very exciting news, and hopefully will lead to more research:
“The team found that humans and the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite share the same complex carbohydrate, heparan sulfate. In both humans and mosquitoes, heparan sulfate is a receptor for the malaria parasite, binding to the parasite and giving it quick and easy transport through the body…“The discovery allows us to think differently about preventing the disease,” Linhardt said. “If we can stop heparan sulfate from binding to the parasite in mosquitoes, we will not just be treating the disease, we will be stopping its spread completely.”
Malaria parasites are extremely finicky about their hosts, Linhardt explained. Birds, rodents, humans, and primates all can be infected with malaria, but each species is infected by a different species of mosquito — and each of those mosquitoes is infected by a different malaria parasite. In other words, there needs to be a perfect match at the molecular basis for malaria to spread from one species to another, Linhardt said. Researchers have long understood this deadly partnership, but the molecular basis for the match had never been determined.
“The discovery marks a paradigm shift in stopping malaria,” Linhardt said “Now, we can work to develop an environmentally safe, inexpensive way to block infection in mosquitoes and not have to worry about drug side effects in humans.”
Full citation and paper: J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 282, Issue 35, 25376-25384, August 31, 2007. Mosquito Heparan Sulfate and Its Potential Role in Malaria Infection and Transmission.
6 Comments
So that’s a pretty interesting finding. An important question revolves around the core protein that the parasite binding HS GAG chains are attached to. Is it a specific core protein or is the GAG sequence found in several different HSPGs. It’s clear now that specific HSPGs can regulate specific signaling pathways. I did postdoctoral research on a specific family of integral membrane HSPGs so I have some familiarity with this subject. It was my understanding, however, that free HS was not present in the blood stream. I would have to go back and double check that.
I work in the drug discovery. All this discovery means is that there is a good new target to work on. It is jjsut a starting point that can lead to a new class of antimalarials 15 years later. Pharma companies are not eager to invest into antimalarials because the number of paying patients is small and artemisin-based drugs work well for thos who can afford them.
I could see a that some large non-profit institute with a large medchem group and sufficient biology support taking on on the problem but the funding has to come from somewhere (government, army, philanthropic donations) because drug development is so expensive and there is plenty of more profitable targets (cancer, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseses) so it is going to be a tough sell.
Yes, but having a target is better than no target. I agree any drug resulting from this is over 15 years in the future–but it’s still pretty exciting.
I’m interested in how the focus has shifted from proteins to carbohydrates in research lately, too.
Speaking of malaria research:
“Clive Thompson speaks on why we can count on geeks to save the earth”
I saw that–I’ve had a post on Slovic’s work sitting in my draft pile for a while.
Nifty stuff.
I heard a snippet on the radio (at work so I wasn’t able to hear the whole thing) about how a some researchers found some interesting things about carbon monoxide and malaria. Here’s what a quick google found:
http://www.earthsky.org/radioshows/51558/malaria-treatment-uses-carbon-monoxide