Press Release: EU-funded breakthrough in malaria treatment in the run up to World Malaria Day

Ahead of World Malaria Day (25 April 2011), EU-funded researchers have discovered that drugs originally designed to inhibit the growth of cancer cells can also kill the parasite that causes malaria.

They believe this discovery could open up a new strategy for combating this deadly disease, which, according to World Health Organisation statistics, infected around 225 million and killed nearly 800,000 people worldwide in 2009. Efforts to find a treatment have so far been hampered by the parasite’s ability to quickly develop drug resistance.

The research involved four projects funded by the EU (ANTIMAL, BIOMALPAR, MALSIG and EVIMALAR) and was led by laboratories in the UK, France and Switzerland with partners from Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden, along with many developing nations severely affected by malaria.