Cancer Drugs Exhibiting Their Malaria-Fighting Properties

Using cancer drugs in malaria treatment can speed up the discovery process of new life-saving therapies for malaria, which is becoming increasingly drug-resistant. This most recent findings were recently published in the ACS Infectious Diseases journal. Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites belonging to Plasmodium species and transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Malaria

Go to source). Being one of the world’s most common infectious diseases, it is responsible for over 600,000 deaths per year in sub-Saharan Africa. About 80 percent of these deaths are children under age 5.

The World Health Organization reported that malaria parasites are increasingly becoming resistant to the current therapy used to treat malaria, which was discovered in the 1990s. So, new and more effective drugs for malaria are long overdue as about 30 years have gone by since we had a new class of compounds in the market against malaria.

Cancer Drugs Could Potentially Be Used to Fight Malaria

But drug discoveries can take years, even decades as compounds go through many phases of testing for efficacy and safety. One of the ways we can accelerate the discovery of new treatment options is to use existing drugs that are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

This is called taking a piggyback approach, looking at existing drugs that are already on the market to see if they have anti-malarial properties. This will help to shorten the initial stages of drug discovery which is usually quite time-consuming.

To meet the urgent need for new drugs, the team decided to repurpose protein kinase inhibitors — drugs originally developed for cancer treatment for malaria. Protein kinases are enzymes that regulate proteins in the body and are heavily targeted for cancer and other disease therapies by the pharmaceutical industry.

Protein kinases are very important for the malaria parasite’s life cycle and as such make good drug targets. As part of the study, researchers tested a range of anti-cancer protein kinase inhibitors to identify inhibitors that are known to target human Polo-like kinase, a type of protein kinase that plays an important role in cell division in humans.

They discovered that a group of inhibitors, specifically BI-2536, a known human Polo-like kinase 1 inhibitor, exhibited strong anti-malarial properties (2^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Plasmodium Kinases as Potential Drug Targets for Malaria: Challenges and Opportunities

Go to source). While the malaria parasite plasmodium does not have Polo-like kinases, the protein kinase inhibitors targeted another family of proteins called NEK, which also regulate cell division.

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They also targeted other stress-response pathways which helped to kill the parasite. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the potential of repurposing of protein kinase inhibitors for malaria treatment, while also underscores the need for further research to identify additional targets and optimize the efficacy of these inhibitors.

References:

1. Malaria - (https://www.nature.com/articles/nrdp201750)
2. Plasmodium Kinases as Potential Drug Targets for Malaria: Challenges and Opportunities - (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsinfecdis.0c00724)

Source-Eurekalert