Friday, September 30, 2016
Zydus Cadila, a research-driven, global healthcare provider and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) announced a collaboration to develop the investigational antimalarial compound, MMV674253. Zydus will lead the development of the novel compound and MMV will provide support including scientific expertise and access to tools in the field of malaria drug development and delivery.
The aim of the collaboration is to provide an effective alternative to the current front-line antimalarial drugs for the treatment of uncomplicated P. falciparum malaria, artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), which are under threat of resistance.
Malaria continues to place a heavy burden on the world. The WHO estimated that in 2015, 214 million malaria cases and 438,000 malaria deaths occurred worldwide. The scale-up of control measures including medicines has saved the lives of more than six million people since 2000.
Yet the rapid development and spread of antimalarial drug resistance threatens this global progress. To date, parasite resistance to artemisinin has been detected in five countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion: Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
The WHO recognizes the imminent danger posed by artemisinin resistance and states that “The geographic scope of the artemisinin-resistance problem could widen quickly and have dire public health consequences: the spread or independent emergence of artemisinin resistance in other parts of the world could pose a major health security risk as no alternative antimalarial medicine is available at present with the same level of efficacy and tolerability as ACTs.”
“Malaria is a major global health risk and its menace has only worsened with the problem of artemisinin-resistance. By collaborating with Medicines for Malaria Venture in this initiative, we hope to usher in a step change in the treatment of this deadly disease,” said Pankaj R. Patel, Chairman and Managing Director, Zydus. “This molecule has a novel mechanism of action, rapidly kills parasites across all intra-erythrocytic stages and has a long half-life, which means it might even lead to a singledose cure for P. falciparum malaria.”
“MMV is delighted that the Zydus team has taken up the challenge of developing MMV674253,” said Dr Timothy Wells, Chief Scientific Officer at MMV. “We discovered this promising candidate in collaboration with AstraZeneca, India, and look forward to co-developing the compound with Zydus. Given the imminent threat of resistance, this novel compound, which kills parasites rapidly with a novel mechanism of action, could be one of the critical alternatives to current therapies the world urgently needs if we are to ultimately defeat malaria.”
Source : zyduscadila.com
