[afro-nets] Gates Gift Expected for Malaria Drug

[Lenny Rhine <Lenny@library.health.ufl.edu>]

Gates Gift Expected for Malaria Drug
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Source: ahila-net@who.int
 
Associated Press article - December 13, 2004
 
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 12 (AP) - The Bill and Melinda Gates Founda-
tion is expected to donate US$ 42.6 million on Monday to a novel 
non-profit drug company that hopes to make a cheaper malaria 
treatment by applying a new biotechnology recipe to an ancient 
Chinese remedy.
 
The company, the Institute of OneWorld Health, will try to turn 
the genetic engineering work of Jay Keasling of the University 
of California, Berkeley, into an inexpensive and effective drug 
to fight malaria in the third world.
 
Dr. Keasling is developing a new way to manufacture artemisinin, 
a malaria fighter made from finely ground wormwood plants. The 
Chinese first extracted artemisinin from the sweet wormwood 
plant for medicinal use more than 2,000 years ago, and since 
then it has been used for a variety of ailments including hemor-
rhoids, coughs and fevers.
 
But the method is expensive, time-consuming and limited by ac-
cess to wormwood. So Dr. Keasling and his colleagues are working 
on a way to eliminate the need for the plant by splicing its 
chemical-producing genes and yeast genes into E. coli and ulti-
mately coaxing artemisinin from this formula.
 
Each year, 300 million to 500 million new cases of malaria are 
diagnosed, the World Health Organization said.
 
It costs about US$ 2.40 a patient to treat malaria with a three-
day drug regimen that includes artemisinin. Many third-world ma-
laria sufferers cannot afford the treatment, and Ms. Hale said 
the Gates money would be used to develop within five years a 
treatment that costs under US$ 1 a patient.