Malaria is endemic to large areas of Africa, Asia and South America and annually kills more than 400,000 people, a majority of whom are children under age 5, with hundreds of millions of new infections every year. Although artemisinin-based drug combinations are available to treat malaria, reports from Southeast Asia of treatment failures are raising concerns about drug resistance spreading to Africa. Fortunately, there is hope on the horizon because there are several new antimalarial drug candidates undergoing clinical testing as well as other promising drug targets that are under investigation.
An international research team has for the first time determined the atomic structure of a protein kinase called PKG in Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria—a finding that potentially will help create a new generation of anti-malarial drugs and advance fundamental research. PKG[i] plays essential roles in the developmental stages of the parasite’s complex life cycle, so understanding its structure is key to developing malaria-fighting therapies that specifically target PKG and not other human enzymes, according to researcher Dr. Charles Calmettes.
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Image: PKG crystal.