A team of FIU researchers has discovered that an antibiotic they developed to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria also has the potential to combat malaria. Arsinothricin has proven to be effective in preventing the parasite that causes malaria from spreading to mosquitoes, which breaks the malaria life cycle.

“Current antimalarials don’t completely stop transmission, meaning patients can continue to infect mosquitoes before they recover,” said lead author Masafumi Yoshinaga.  “Developing new potent multi-stage drugs is imperative to ensure malaria elimination and eradication. We found AST is a promising lead compound for developing a new class of potent multi-stage antimalarials.”