Engineered yeast may cut cost of malaria drug
US researchers have created a modified form of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that is capable of producing large amounts of artemisinic acid, which is needed to make the anti-malaria drug artemisinin.
Malaria, caused by the one-celled parasite carried by mosquitoes called plasmodium, kills at least one million people every year and makes 300 million people seriously ill. Ninety percent of malaria deaths occur in Africa, south of the Sahara, mostly among young children.
Artemisinin is the drug of choice for treating multi-drug resistant strains of Plasmodium species. Unfortunately, the drug, which comes from the wormwood plant Artemisia annua, is expensive and supplies are limited, meaning that many malaria patients in developing countries go untreated.
This week in the journal Nature, Dr. Jay D. Keasling, from the University of California at Berkeley, and colleagues report that they altered the biosynthetic pathways of S. cerevisiae and inserted two enzymatic genes from A. annua to create the high-yield yeast.
The artemisinic acid that is produced can then be converted to artemisinin with just a few chemical steps.
With further refinement, “a conservative analysis suggests that artemisinin combination therapies could be offered significantly below their current prices,” the authors conclude.
SOURCE: Nature April 13, 2006.
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