Military

DATE=4/22/03

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=MALARIA PROTEIN (L-O)

NUMBER=2-302441

BYLINE=JESSICA BERMAN

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

INTERNET=

INTRO: Researchers in Scotland and Thailand have made a breakthrough in the battle against malaria, a mosquito-borne, parasitic illness that kills between one- and three-million people each year around the world. They have isolated a protein that has made the disease resistant to current treatments. V-O-A's Jessica Berman reports.

TEXT: The protein produced by the malaria parasite is called D-H-F-R, which has made traditional, anti-malarial drugs increasingly ineffective during the past 30-years.

Researchers have known about the D-H-F-R molecule for some time. But they have used one drug compound after another against the protein in an effort to make the parasite sensitive to anti-malarial drugs.

Now, researchers at Thailand's Biotec Institute and Edinburgh University in Scotland have isolated the mutated form of D-H-F-R. Professor Malcolm Walkinshaw of Edinburgh University says they have taken very clear, detailed pictures of both normal D-H-F-R and mutated D-H-F-R.

/// WALKINSHAW ACT ///

If you are fixing a machine or a car engine or something in the dark with no plans, this is like having the light turned on and being able to see the plans and see what you need to do.

/// END ACT ///

Professor Walkinshaw says researchers now have a complete, three-dimensional map of D-H-F-R. The finding will help them develop or improve drugs that target specific places on the surface of the D-H-F-R molecule to keep it from producing the stealth molecule.

/// WALKINSHAW ACT ///

It gives us a very clear path to follow of what requirements we need on the new drug. Maybe it just needs -small changes, small structural changes, in the existing types of molecules that will make them bind better and fit around these changes in the shape that the parasite has evolved.

/// END ACT ///

The team's findings were published in the journal "Nature Structural Biology."

Professor Walkinshaw is certain the malaria parasite will eventually become resistant to new drugs that are likely to follow his work. But for the first time, scientists will have the chance to stay ahead of the parasite. (SIGNED)

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