View an illustration about the life cycle of the malaria
parasite. Malaria has been eradicated in the United States since
the 1950s, but worldwide, it continues to affect 200-300 million
people every year. Recently, NIAID-supported researchers,
coordinated by a group at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital,
identified 172 candidate chemicals that can be used to develop
new antimalarial drugs. Their results were published in the May
20, 2010 issue of the journal Nature. Plasmodium falciparum, one
of the four parasites that cause malaria, is responsible for
880,000 deaths every year. Although treatments already exist,
malaria-causing parasites have evolved to become resistant to
most of these drugs and are now able to fight them off, making
them ineffective. This growing problem of antimicrobial
resistance has driven researchers to look for new chemical
treatments. In recent years, scientists’ understanding of P.
falciparum and its genetics has grown, but the current pipeline
of antimalarial compounds does not