A Berkeley scientist, an Albany biotechnology startup and a unique San
Francisco nonprofit drug company will announce today they have received a
$43 million grant to develop a cheaper version of a Chinese herbal drug
that is considered the most effective cure for malaria. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation of Seattle will provide the money to
speed the development of a genetically engineered form of artemisinin, an
herbal medicine derived from the dried leaves of the wormwood plant.
Artemisinin, which has been used in China to treat fevers since A.D. 150,
came into vogue as a modern malaria treatment after studies in Vietnam
showed it reduced deaths from the illness by 97 percent.
A parasitic blood disease responsible for 1.5 million deaths each year,
malaria strikes up to 500 million annually and has grown increasingly
resistant to a variety of medicines that have been used to control it. The
World Health Organization now recognizes that drugs combining antibiotics
with the herbal extract provide the most rapid defense against malaria and
are the only ones to which the parasite has not developed resistance.
A three-day course of drugs containing artemisinin can cure malaria for
about $2.40 — inexpensive by Western standards, but out of reach in many
of the Asian and African nations where the disease is taking its biggest
toll.
Jay Keasling, a UC Berkeley chemical engineering professor, is working to
produce artemisinin for one-tenth the current cost. With a team of
scientists, he has developed during the past 10 years a process he calls
“synthetic biology,” the use of genetically engineered bacteria to churn
out chemical compounds.
Unlike modern biotechnology drugs such as insulin, which require the
transfer of a single gene into a bacterium, it will take 12 genes from the
wormwood plant to coax the chemical out of modified E. coli strains in his
lab, Keasling said.
“It is a 12-step process, and we have gotten to No. 9,” he said. “If we
get to 10, we can start making it.”
Part of the Gates Foundation money will be used to put Keasling’s research
over the top.
Amyris Biotechnologies, an Albany company set up by several of Keasling’s
former students, will share the grant, developing a system to bring the
laboratory techniques up to an industrial scale.
A third partner in the program is the Institute for OneWorld Health, a San
Francisco firm that will shepherd the drug through clinical trials and the
Food and Drug Administration approval process. The first nonprofit
pharmaceutical firm in the United States, OneWorld was founded in July
2000 by UCSF-trained pharmaceutical chemist Victoria Hale. It is already
using a Gates Foundation grant to develop a low-cost treatment for
visceral leishmaniasis, a potentially fatal parasitic infection
transmitted by the sandfly.
“We think this malaria project is fantastic,” Hale said. “We are elated.”
Currently, artemisinin production relies on a network of farmers in
Vietnam and China who raise wormwood during an eight-month crop cycle.
Shortages of the plant help keep the price of the drug high.
Hale acknowledged that industrial production of a genetically engineered
drug eventually will hurt the farmers who grow the crops today.
“The farmers will be less competitive, but we came to the conclusion that
the benefits for the continent of Africa in having a very affordable and
effective malaria cure outweighs the effects on farmers,” she said.
Dr. Regina Rabinovich, director of infectious diseases at the Gates
Foundation, said that the artemisinin program demonstrates “an
extraordinary partnership” between public and private institutions.
“I hope that UC Berkeley’s participation will serve as a model for other
academic institutions,” she said.
E-mail Sabin Russell at srussell@sfchronicle.com. ———————————————————————-
Copyright 2004 SF Chronicle
Tags: Health, Malaria, Vietnam
