A discovery opens the door to the development of new drugs targeting malaria, one of the deadliest infectious diseases on the planet. The researcher teams performed a screen of soil bacteria extracts for antimalarials and identified an extremely potent inhibitor of malaria development.

Co-led by Gerry Wright, professor of biochemistry & biomedical sciences, the discovery opens the door to the development of new drugs targeting malaria, one of the deadliest infectious diseases on the planet.

Collaborating with professor Tim Gilberger of the University of Hamburg in Germany, the researcher teams performed a screen of soil bacteria extracts for antimalarials and identified an extremely potent inhibitor of malaria development.

«We’ve shined a new light here,» said Wright, the inaugural lead of Canada’s Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biological Threats at McMaster. «We’re looking at a part of chemistry that nobody has ever looked at before.»

This breakthrough, published today in Cell Chemical Biology, comes at a pivotal time in global malaria management, Wright said.

Drug resistance in malaria is becoming «a huge problem,» he said, and climate change is pushing malaria-carrying mosquitoes to new places, broadening the disease’s spread. The World Health Organization estimates that malaria was responsible for more than 400,000 deaths and 229 million infections in 2019 alone.

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Materials provided by McMaster University. Original written by Blake Dillon. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.