Africa: New Drug Puts Malaria Under the Pump

19 February 2013
Australian National University (Canberra)

Researchers have discovered how a new class of antimalarial drugs kills the malaria parasite, showing that the drugs block a pump at the parasite surface, causing it to fill with salt.

In work conducted at the Research School of Biology (RSB) at The Australian National University (ANU), and published in the latest edition of Cell Host & Microbe, Dr Natalie Spillman showed that the malaria parasite has at its surface a protein that serves as a molecular salt pump, pushing sodium ions out of the parasite.

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