Table 1 Five key themes
From: CRIMALDDI: a prioritized research agenda to expedite the discovery of new anti-malarial drugs
Key theme | Rationale behind the theme |
|---|---|
Attacking artemisinin resistance | Artemisinin-based combination therapy is fundamental to the control of malaria. The appearance of tolerance to artemisinins seen in Southeast Asia could threaten current control and elimination efforts. Understanding the mechanism of resistance is fundamental to designing future anti-malarials. |
Creating and sharing community resources | Improved sharing of information about all aspects of anti-malarial drug discovery will help to speed up drug development. Strategies have been identified to improve information sharing in order to focus effort and reduce duplication. |
Delivering enabling technologies | Anti-malarial drug discovery is being held up, especially for P. vivax, because certain enabling technologies are not in place. The development of these will be the key to discovering novel drugs. |
Exploiting HTS hits quickly | The structures of about 20,000 compounds that have given positive hits in HTS are now publicly available. Recommendations are made to filter this unparalleled amount of information quickly and efficiently to identify the most promising leads and move them quickly into drug development. |
Identifying novel targets | At present drug development is focused on a few well-characterized drug targets, nearly all in the blood stage of P. falciparum infections. The search for new drug targets is constrained by the poor understanding of the underlying biology of the parasite’s life cycle in humans. New targets need to be identified and validated. |