A new malaria drug developed at Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland VA Medical Center could represent a breakthrough against a disease that kills 1.2 million people a year.

While testing the drug on humans could be years away, the compound has infectious disease researchers saying the vexing disease– with us at least 20 million years, according to fossil-testing – could finally be eradicated.

The drug "has the potential to prevent transmission of the disease. It has the potential to prevent the disease altogether," says

, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at OHSU and director of the Experimental Chemotherapy Lab at the Portland VA Medical Center.

Riscoe was the lead investigator for a study published Wednesday in the journal

, showing the new compound, ELQ-300, to be extremely potent in mice.

Malaria is what drug researchers call a neglected disease. The people it kills are typically impoverished, undernourished denizens of the tropical and sub-tropical areas of Asia, Africa and the Americas. "There is not a lot of money to be made in developing a new anti-malaria drug," says Riscoe. Pregnant women as well as children under 6 are most vulnerable

The new drug is "very promising" and the published study appears comprehensive and sophisticated, in contrast to past advances that did not pan out, said Malcolm Gardner, a professor and malaria researcher at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute who was not part of the ELQ-300 research. "Its potency seems very high."

The new compound has so far been shown to work only on mice and mosquitoes. But the mosquito part of the research could be significant – because the insect carries the malaria parasite between humans. Instead of carrier mosquitoes transmitting the disease to humans with their bites, says Riscoe, a mosquito biting a human treated with the new drug could transmit the cure to the bug, eliminating the parasite.

The need is great. The drugs that used to work against malaria, quinine and chloroquine, have become less effective as the disease has mutated and become resistant. Quinine was effective for hundreds of years before malaria evolved to resist it.

And the disease is getting stronger. It took only a few decades for malaria to become resistant to artemisinin, a next-generation drug introduced in the 1970s.

ELQ-300 is a variant of a drug developed by German scientists in the 1940s. The drug, endochin, was set aside after it was deemed effective in canaries, but not humans. The Swiss nonprofit called

leads a group that includes OHSU, the University of South Florida and several other universities trying to make the drug effective. The National Institutes of Health also helps fund the study. ELQ-300 is the 300th variety of the drug tested.

A pharmaceutical company to produce the drug has not been chosen. That decision will likely be up to the Swiss nonprofit, Riscoe said. But because it is so potent, the drug looks like it will be relatively inexpensive to make.

The drug also could take only one dose to cure a person – considered crucial in poor countries where medical care can be spotty at best. Other malaria drugs have cured the disease when it's active in the bloodstream, but left the parasite to lie dormant in the liver and later return. ELQ-300 kills the parasite as it lives in the liver as well as the bloodstream, and its effects are long lasting.

"It has potential to become part of a combination therapy that could cure patients, prevent infection and block the transmission of malaria -- all at low-doses -- which means fewer and smaller pills for patients, at a lower cost," said Dr. Tim Wells of Medicines for Malaria Venture.

The drug isn't expected to be approved for human trials for at least a year or two, and it could be a decade until it is proved safe and the dosage approved.

But researchers are optimistic the drug will prove safe for human consumption: They say that's because its chemical composition is strikingly similar to quinine and atovaquone, two anti-malarial drugs that have proved safe.

"This is really exciting," said Taifo Mahmud, an Oregon State University associate professor of medicinal chemistry who's researched anti-malaria drugs. "I have a good feeling about this."

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