WPI to test malaria treatment with NIH grant
A $420,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will allow a team of Worcester Polytechnic Institute researchers to test a plant-based therapy WPI is developing for the treatment of malaria.
Led by Pamela Weathers, a professor of biology and biotechnology, the research team is testing a therapy that consists of dried leaves of the sweet wormwood plant called Artemisia annua.
The plant produces a compound called artemisinin, which is currently used in combination with other drugs to treat malaria, according to WPI. But that combination therapy is expensive and is often in short supply in parts of the world where the disease is prevalent; and malaria is now beginning to show signs of resistance to the combination treatment, particularly in Southeast Asia, WPI said.
“The increasing drug resistance is alarming,” Weathers said in a statement. “Our ultimate goal is to make an easy-to-produce therapy available to the people who need it most.”
A mosquito-borne illness, malaria is reported in nearly 100 countries, with more than 200 million people contracting the disease in 2012, according to the World Health Organization. About 627,000 of those infected — mostly young children — died from the disease.
The NIH grant will fund a series of experiments over the next three years, WPI said. Meanwhile, Weathers is working with several groups in Africa and the U.S. to establish a model for using plant therapy to treat malaria. Weathers envisions a system that relies on local farmers to grow the plant and deliver leaves to processing stations where they would be processed into pill form and distributed to populations in need.
“The beauty of all this is that the plant is easy to grow in most areas and the production process is relatively simple,” Weathers said. “It could be an important boost for local economies and for the health of local populations.”
Image source: Freedigitalphotos.net
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