A groundbreaking UK-US study may give researchers worldwide the tools they need to contain the spread of malaria, a disease that can have fatal consequences, and it specially has in Sub-Saharan Africa

In the latest study, led by a team from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in the US, the scientists initially sought to prevent malaria parasites from invading healthy red blood cells. What they actually did was stop the parasites in their tracks within infected blood cells.

The researchers noted that humans do not carry the kinase protein under investigation; only parasites and plants do. Consequently, developing a drug targeted to that protein could possibly be less toxic to humans. Dr Dvorin, lead author of the study, noted that no anti-malarial drugs have been developed that target these stages of the parasite's lifecycle.

Malaria impacts the lives of up to 500 million people worldwide each year; 1 million of those, many of them children from sub-Saharan Africa, succumb to the disease. Symptoms include high fevers, anaemia and shaking chills. One of the biggest challenges facing researchers is the fact that malaria's resistance to drug treatment continues to strengthen.

The stydy has been published in the journal Science and was funded in part by the EU through the MALSIG project, which received EUR 3 million under the Heath Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to boost understanding of the biology of malaria parasites.

The MALSIG project, which is coordinated by France's Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM), brings together experts from France, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK. The project began in 2009 and will end in 2012.

The European Commission promised, in 2008, EUR 40 million in funding to the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP).The amount signifies half of the EUR 80 million that the EDCTP has approved for research into the prevention of poverty-related diseases in Africa.