New breakthrough for tailor made drugs to fight malaria

Scientists have used high-resolution structural biology methods in the malaria pathogen's cellular skeleton to investigate the different versions of this protein in the parasite in high detail, which can help in developing tailor-made drugs for fighting the disease.

Scientists of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Germany investigated the different versions protein called actin found in Plasmodium parasite, which causes malaria.

The researchers have succeeded in detecting filament assembly of the parasite actin II proteins.

The project leader Prof Inari Kursula said that the structures showed them that the two variants differ more from each other than actins in any other known living organism do and the high resolution enabled the researchers to identify areas within the proteins that cause the different behaviour.

He said that they have discovered that Plasmodium actin filaments are very different from other actin filaments and now that they know the structural basis for this, we can look for ways to specifically interfere with the parasite cytoskeleton to the of this protein in the parasite in high detail.

The study was published in PLOS Pathogens.