Table 7 Priorities – identifying novel targets

Important quick wins

• Better definition of what constitutes target validation to ensure that novel targets are real and practical

Speeding-up drug discovery

• Focus on looking for novelty in the first 12 hours of the ring stage (to ensure rapid kill of parasites as seen with artemisinins) and in the last 12 hours of the schizont stage

• Focus on identifying targets other than haem in the blood stages of malarial infections

• Using currently available mathematical tools and models developed in other biological fields to develop mathematical models of biological pathways in the malaria parasite to improve understanding of the underlying biology and identify possible novel targets

• Phenotype parasite strains that are affected differently by each chemical class to identify characteristics that may be used to identify novel targets

• Focus on increased understanding of the activity of current anti-malarials in high priority areas (e g, activity of 8-aminoquinolines in hypnozoites, effect of antibiotic pre-treatment on apicoplasts)