Access: Parasites Lost


	Protein structure research leads to the discovery that anti-osteoporosis drugs inhibit the organisms that cause malaria and other tropical diseases.

Deadly fevers have been known since ancient times. The Italians gave one of the more common fevers its modern name—mal' aria, or "bad air"—because it was widely believed that breathing the putrid vapors of swamps caused the affliction. In 1880 scientists found the real cause of malaria, parasitic protozoa of the genus Plasmodium. Eighteen years later, it was discovered that this malaria-causing protozoa is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito.

Despite all that has been learned about malaria in the last century, nearly 300 million people suffer acute malaria each year, and at least 1 million a year, or about 3,000 people a day, die of the disease. According to the World Health Organization, a child dies of malaria every 40 seconds.

Adult female Anopheles gambiae mosquito, which can carry malaria. Photo courtesy of Sinclair Stammers for the World Health Organization Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases.

Malaria is, of course, a disease of the tropics and subtropics—of places with jungles, not cornfields. Yet the University of Illinois is the site of basic research conducted by chemist Eric Oldfield and tropical disease experts Silvia N.J. Moreno and Robert Docampo that has led to an important advance in understanding malaria. Working with international collaborators, these researchers made unexpectedly discovered that anti-osteoporosis drugs can inhibit the growth of Plasmodium. What's more, they found that these drugs can also inhibit the protozoa that cause several other diseases, raising hopes of a new drug strategy against a devastating list of illnesses.

Adult Rhodnius prolixus. This insect transmits the parasites that cause Chagas' disease in its feces, which are deposited near the site of the bite. Photo courtesy of Sinclair Stammers for the World Health Organization Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases.

This discovery might never have happened without computational chemistry—running of quantum mechanical experiments on computers.

The researchers turned to NCSA's SGI Origin2000 supercomputer running the Gaussian 98 software. To make and confirm their key findings, the group used 35,000 service units of computing time in less than three months. "Over a year's allocation has just gone 'bing,'" Oldfield says. "Why didn't we ask for more? We didn't think it would require that much." He adds that they've been invited to apply for additional allocations.

Access Online | Posted 5-8-2001