Major US Funding for antimalarial and antibiotic treatment research

Two groups of researchers from the Victorian College of Pharmacy at Monash University have succeeded in attracting $10M in collaborative funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to independently study antimalarial and antibiotic drug treatments.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the NIH, has granted $6M to a multidisciplinary group which includes A/Prof Susan Charman and Prof Bill Charman from the Centre for Drug Candidate Optimisation (CDCO), Victorian College of Pharmacy, Monash University.

The research focuses on inhibiting the enzyme, dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHODH), which is essential for the malaria parasite to survive. The goal of this collaborative project is to design a new drug candidate that inhibits this enzyme and develop it into a new antimalarial drug that can be entered into clinical trials.

Working with the Medicines for Malaria Venture in Geneva (Switzerland), the proposed work plan for the DHODH project encompasses an integrated and multi-disciplinary approach bringing together the expertise of three laboratories: biochemistry and structural biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dr Meg Phillips); medicinal chemistry and malaria biology at the University of Washington, Seattle (Dr Pradip Rathod); and lead optimization and preclinical development at the CDCO, Victorian College of Pharmacy, Monash University.

“This is the third international malaria drug discovery project the CDCO is part of and we look forward to building on our expertise to collaboratively design and bring a further new drug candidate to the clinic,” A/Prof Susan Charman stated.

The second NIH funded project involves Prof Roger Nation and Dr Jian Li of the Facility for Anti-infective Drug Development and Innovation (FADDI) in the Victorian College of Pharmacy, Monash University. They will collaborate with other Australian and US investigators (Profs David Paterson and Alan Forrest) to determine appropriate dosing of the antibiotic, colistin, a ‘last-line’ antibiotic for critically-ill patients.

Their research, which attracted $4M in funding from NIAID, involves a clinical trial in hundreds of critically-ill patients across several countries to investigate the way healthy and sick people handle colistin, and colistin’s effect on infection. The major outcome of the project is to develop colistin dosing guidelines.

“Jian and I are very happy about the grant, especially when the NIH success rate is running at only about 8%. We look forward to positively impacting colistin use at a time when doctors desperately need guidance on optimising dosing of this old, but still poorly understood, antibiotic for the various categories of critically-ill patients they treat,” Professor Nation said.

Both studies will take place over a 5-year period.