A collaboration aimed at identifying and developing potential new antimalarial drug candidate drugs has been announced between Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, and Janssen Pharmaceutica, with assistance from Johnson & Johnson Innovation. The collaboration has already discovered promising compounds with antimalarial activity from among 80,000 drug-like molecules in the Janssen Jumpstarter Compound Library, a collection of drug-like compounds designed to fast-track discovery of new medicines.
New phase IIb clinical trial data show the antigen R-21, a malaria vaccine candidate created by the University of Oxford that uses Novavax Inc.'s Matrix-M adjuvant, demonstrated 77% efficacy in children.
Severe malaria infections caused by malaria could disrupt hematopoietic processes in mouse models, resulting in faster turnover of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and drastically affecting their function, researchers from Imperial College London and The Francis Crick Institute reported in the November 23, 2020, online issue of Nature Cell Biology.
Intravenous artesunate, the international standard of care to treat severe malaria, has finally won full FDA approval for the condition, which affects about 300 of the approximately 2,000 people diagnosed with malaria in the U.S. each year.
