A USF team is working to disrupt the ability of the malaria parasite to resist the effects of the most popular drug used to treat the disease, artemisinin. “The parasite has slowly evolved,” says researcher John Adams. “It just has to hang around long enough not to get killed by artemisinin, which disappears so fast. And if the parasite is in the early phase of its development, it has a natural resistance to the drug.”
But the team found a way to go back to an earlier point in the parasite’s development and disrupt it in a way that makes it less able to tolerate artemisinin. “The parasite development is very rhythmic... A lot of genes are expressed just in time for when they’re needed, and then they’re gone. So if they are made at the wrong time, they will not have the same function.”
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