"Artemisinin treats malaria faster than any other drug. It can clear the pathogen from the bloodstream within 48 hours," says senior author Shashi Kumar, of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in New Delhi, India. "Our research is focused on finding a way to make this drug available to more people."
Malaria infects more than 200 million people every year, according to the World Health Organization, and kills more than 400,000, mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia. The majority of those who live in malaria-stricken areas cannot afford to buy artemisinin. The drug's high cost is due to the extraction process and largely to the fact that it's difficult to grow Artemisia annua (sweet wormword), the plant that is the original source of the drug, in climates where malaria is common, such as in India. Advances in synthetic biology have made it possible to produce the drug in yeast, but the manufacturing process is difficult to scale up.
Earlier studies looked at growing the compound in tobacco -- a plant that's relatively easy to genetically manipulate and that grows well in areas where malaria is endemic. But yields of artemisinin from those plants were low.
source:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161020142815.htm
Malaria infects more than 200 million people every year, according to the World Health Organization, and kills more than 400,000, mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia. The majority of those who live in malaria-stricken areas cannot afford to buy artemisinin. The drug's high cost is due to the extraction process and largely to the fact that it's difficult to grow Artemisia annua (sweet wormword), the plant that is the original source of the drug, in climates where malaria is common, such as in India. Advances in synthetic biology have made it possible to produce the drug in yeast, but the manufacturing process is difficult to scale up.
Earlier studies looked at growing the compound in tobacco -- a plant that's relatively easy to genetically manipulate and that grows well in areas where malaria is endemic. But yields of artemisinin from those plants were low.
source:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161020142815.htm
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