BCX 4945

BCX 4945 is the name of a new Malaria drug developed by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. This new anti-malarial agent clears infections caused by the malaria parasite most lethal to humans – by literally starving the parasites to death. It could bolster efforts to develop more potent therapies against one of the world’s leading killers.

How does it work?

Plasmodium falciparum, the malaria species most likely to cause severe infections and death, is very common in many countries in Africa south of the Sahara desert. The scientists exploited what is arguably P. falciparum’s Achilles’ heel: it can’t synthesize purines, vital building blocks for making DNA. The scientists say that the parasite must make purines indirectly, by using an enzyme called purine nucleoside phosphorylase (PNP) to make a purine precursor called hypoxanthine.

By inhibiting PNP, the drug BCX4945 kills the parasites by starving them of the purines they need to survive. Scientists also claimed that BCX4945 fits well with the current World Health Organization protocols for malaria treatment, which call for using combination-therapy approaches against the disease.