d hydroxy-naphthoquinones originally readied during World War II. Most of the drugs in that group proved too toxic or too quickly broken down in the body. "They lost out when more benign and easily synthesized drugs such as chloroquine appeared," Shapiro says. But atovoquone, an offshoot developed later in the 1970s, had promise because it was the least toxic.

It crawled on a slow track until recently, when drug companies resurrected it as a therapy for the Pneumocystis infections that give AIDS patients pneumonia. "Atovoquone is a survivor," says Shapiro. "Now here it is again."

The research was funded by Glaxo Wellcome, an NIH grant and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Glaxo Wellcome is preparing to donate the combined form of atovaquone and proguanil to a non-profit foundation that will distribute the drug, with tight restrictions, in malaria-endemic countries. "If you have a new approach to drug resistance," says Shapiro, "you can't squander it. You can't throw the drug around carelessly. We've seen what happens when we do that."

Other Hopkins researchers in the study are Channa D. Ranasinha, M.D.(a postdoctoral fellow no longer at Hopkins), Nirbhay Kumar, Ph.D., and Patricia Barditch-Crovo, M.D.

'"/>

Contact: Marjorie Centofanti
mcentofanti@jhmi.edu
410-955-8725
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
24-Sep-1999

Page: 1 2 3
Related medicine news :

1. Screening for osteoporosis prevents hip fractures in older adults
2. Understanding how prostaglandin prevents gut injury during radiation therapy
3. Exercise prevents Parkinsons symptoms in lab model mimicking human form of the disease
4. Study finds once-daily Valcyte prevents serious viral infection after kidney transplant
5. Enzyme prevents lung damage in premature infants
6. Enoxaparin prevents stillbirth in pregnant women with clotting disorder
7. New drug prevents arrhythmias that cause sudden cardiac death
8. Detecting vitamin B12 deficiency prevents anaemia and memory loss
9. Drug prevents diabetes recurrence after islet cell transplantation
10. Gene targeting prevents memory loss in Alzheimers disease model
11. Combined drug therapy prevents progression of prostate enlargement