Last Updated: 01/02/2024
Research on compounds blocking Plasmodium transmission using new experimental models
Objectives
*Original title in Portuguese: Pesquisa de compostos bloqueadores da transmissão de Plasmodium usando novos modelos experimentais
This project aims to develop experimental models of Plasmodium to perform a large-scale screening of new transmission blocking drugs in different compound libraries.
Malaria is a preventable, diagnosable and treatable disease. However, it causes thousands of deaths every year and millions of people are still in danger. The vast majority of Malaria cases worldwide are due to infections with Plasmodium vivax or P. falciparum. There is an urgent need to eliminate Malaria, as drug resistance is reappearing. There is a general consensus that elimination is not simply a matter of intensifying the use of available tools. New strategies, such as blocking transmission, will be needed. Malaria treatment depends on drugs that eliminate the proliferative stages of the parasite, which are the cause of the disease. However, most of the available antimalarials have little activity against gametocytes, which are not proliferative, and are the stage responsible for transmitting the parasite to mosquitoes. The World Health Organization considers that new strategies to block transmission will be important for the elimination of Malaria, specifically those that inhibit transmission in the first weeks after the start of antimalarial treatment.
May 2019 — Jan 2023
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