Unique Czech Discovery will help Malaria Treatment

Czech Scientist have managed to get a unique discovery, which should help to develop a medication against the mortal disease, malaria.

The key was to find the mysterious predecessor of today’s parasites. These are conducive to, among others, malaria, to which 1,3 million die every year. There is no vaccine, present preventive medications can cause depressions, leading to suicide. To research a new medicine is problematic, because handling the parasite responsible for malaria is very expensive, sophisticated and dangerous.

As Nature magazine informed, the Czech scientist team went for a clue, the parasitic protozoa have chloroplast in their cells. It was sure there was some sea-weed able of photosynthesis among its ancestors, but the science world regarded it as extinct. However, an Australian biologist Robert Moore found it on a coral reef in Australia, and send it to the Miroslav Odbornik in Ceske Budejovice. Odbornik’s team proved, it is really the long searched-for ancestor, a living fossil who has lived on Earth 750 millions years already.

Testing a new malaria medicine on the newly discovered model, the sea-weed Chromera velia, will be much easier, safer, and faster.