The Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP), part of the University of York, has received a €10.6 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to complete research on a plant that could help alleviate the global shortage of effective treatments for malaria – a disease that kills more than 1 million people every year, most of them children in Africa. The Centre, part of the Biology Department at York University, has been working on a fast-track breeding research programme for the plant Artemisia annua – currently the sole source of the leading anti-malarial drug, artemisinin. The goal of the research is to create a non-GM variety of the plant with greatly increased yields of artemisinin for use in Artemisinin Combination Therapies (ACTs) – identified as the most effective treatment for malaria by the World Health Organisation. Demand for artemisinin and ACTs has increased dramatically in recent years because the malaria parasite has developed resistance to traditional single-drug treatments such as chloroquine. A shortage of artemisinin has arisen, leading to an increase in its price of up to fivefold since 2004.
Malaria kills a child every thirty seconds in Africa, and to combat this deadly disease, up to half a billion courses of ACT may be needed. The new Artemisia annua varieties that the CNAP researchers are developing could help to ensure that there is enough artemisinin to satisfy this demand. Importantly, this research could also make the drug cheaper to produce.
Artemisia annua grows wild in the UK, where it is sometimes referred to as Sweet Annie. The plant has been used as a treatment for malaria in its native China for more than 400 years.
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