NEW DELHI: There is a ray of hope for over 10 million people affected by Parkinson’s disease across the world. A

professor and his team have found an effective drug

for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. So far, there is no

cure

for the disease.

The molecule developed by DU professor has undergone pre-clinical trial, and now been taken by an American pharma industry for further studies. Professor D S Rawat of the chemistry department and his team of seven other people were working on this project for the past eight years.

Earlier, the team had developed a molecule for malaria treatment. The results of their experiment were published in ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters in 2012.

“During the same time, I came across a paper published by Sanders in 1987 in ‘Nature’ journal wherein he concluded that chloroquine, a

for malaria treatment, can retard Parkinson progression. But no one carried forward that work. Since our compounds were better than chloroquine for malaria and had structural similarity with chloroquine, we thought of taking it forward,” DS Rawat told TOI.

The team then got in touch with professor Kim at Mc Lean hospital at Boston in the USA. “We started collaboration with him and in 2014, MJ Fox Foundation funded this project. We got exciting results, and our molecule cleared pre-clinical trials, meaning it has an excellent chance to be developed as a drug,” said Rawat.

“Out of 10,000 compounds, only one compound comes to market as a drug,” Rawat added while explaining the importance of the compound reaching the trial stage.

The molecule developed by the team is based on a hybrid technology. “In this, a medicinal chemist joins two or more drugs for better efficiency than giving drugs in combination,” said Rawat.