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 In a study in the journal Scientific Reports, scientists from
Britain's Cambridge University who used the AI robot to conduct
high-throughput screening said the ingredient, triclosan, showed the
potential to interrupt malaria infections at two critical stages -
in the liver and the blood.
Malaria kills around half a million people every year, the vast
majority of them children in the poorest parts of Africa. The
disease can be treated with a number of drugs, but resistance to
these medicines is increasing, raising the risk that some strains
may become untreatable in the future.
Because of this, the search for new medicines was becoming
increasingly urgent, said Steve Oliver of Cambridge University's
biochemistry department, who co-led the work with Elizabeth Bilsland.
After being transferred into a new host via a mosquito bite, malaria
parasites work their way into the liver, where they mature and
reproduce. They then move into red blood cells, multiply and spread
around the body, causing fever and potentially life-threatening
complications.
Scientists have known for some time that triclosan can halt malaria
parasites' growth at the blood stage of the infection by inhibiting
the action of an enzyme known as enoyl reductase (ENR), which is
involved in production of fatty acids.
In toothpaste, this helps prevent a build-up of plaque bacteria.
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In this latest work, however, Bilsland's team found that triclosan
also inhibits an entirely different enzyme of the malaria parasite,
called DHFR.
DHFR is the target of the antimalarial pyrimethamine - a drug to
which malaria parasites are increasingly developing resistance,
particularly in Africa. The Cambridge team's work showed that
triclosan was able to target and act on this enzyme even in
pyrimethamine-resistant parasites.
"The discovery by our robot colleague that triclosan is effective
against malaria targets offers hope that we may be able to use it to
develop a new drug," said Elizabeth Bilsland, who co-led the work.
"We know it is a safe compound, and its ability to target two points
in the malaria parasite's lifecycle means the parasite will find it
difficult to evolve resistance."
The AI robot scientist used in the study - nicknamed Eve - was
designed to automate and speed up the drug discovery process.
It does this by automatically developing and testing hypotheses to
explain observations, running experiments using laboratory robotics,
interpreting the results, altering the hypotheses, and then
repeating the cycle.
(Editing by Richard Balmforth)
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