E-DRUG: genetically modified artemisinin production?
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[copied as fair use; WB]
more affordable artemisinin in the works?
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Combating malaria has been one of the primary goals
of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and its latest gift of $42.6
million will fund a nonprofit drug company's high-tech take on an
ancient Chinese remedy.
Working with a biotechnology company, the San Francisco-based Institute
for OneWorld Health will try to turn the genetic engineering efforts of
Jay Keasling of the University of California, Berkley into an
inexpensive and effective drug to fight malaria in the third world. An
announcement was expected Monday.
Keasling is developing a new way to manufacture artemisinin, which is
made from finely ground wormwood plants. Chinese first extracted
artemisinin from the sweet wormwood for medicinal use more than 2,000
years ago. Since then it has been applied to a variety of ailments, but
the method is expensive, time consuming and limited by access to
wormwood.
"The plant can't supply a whole continent," said Victoria Hale,
OneWorld's chief executive.
Keasling and his colleagues are trying to eliminate the need for the
plant by splicing its chemical-producing genes and yeast genes into E.
coli, ultimately coaxing artemisinin from this creation.
"I hope that UC Berkeley's participation will serve as a model for other
academic institutions to apply their scientific knowledge and resources
to critical global health problems," said Dr. Regina Rabinovich,
director of infectious diseases at the Gates Foundation.
The foundation has donated nearly $300 million in malaria-related
grants. The disease kills over a million people each year, most of them
young children in Africa and Asia.