The Barometer Online

Issue date: 2/27/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Luke Wenker College of Pharmacy associate professor Taifo Mahmud is involved with research on the production of a malaria cure. Mahumud's research could greatly decrease the cost of producing drugs that fight tuberculosis and a number of other diseases.

An Oregon State pharmacy professor is in the early development stages of creating a drug that will cure malaria and tuberculosis.

Taifo Mahmud, associate professor in the College of Pharmacy, has begun research involving a biosynthesis approach to creating the new drug. Not only will it cure malaria and tuberculosis, but will also effect diseases such as diptheria, tetanus, pertussis and heamophilius influenzae B.

"In the lab we try to understand how this small box can produce or make such interesting molecules," Mahmud said.

The biosynthesis approach involves taking the small-complex molecules in microorganisms, like bacteria and fungi, and using genetic modification to change the "small box" where the genes and proteins lie.

They try to "isolate compounds through separation," Mahmud said. The process is like extracting the milk and sugar from coffee and analyzing the different extractions.

There are four types of malaria, the most serious one being plasmodium falciparum.

Malaria infects most regions of the world, but the Sub-Saharan African area is where more one million people die each year, according to the United Methodist Church.

Tuberculosis has infected "one-third of the world's population" and "is the leading killer of people who are HIV-infected," according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mahmud is in collaboration with Oregon Translational Research and Drug Development Institute (OTRADI) in Portland and other labs in Indonesia, China and the U.S.

The basis of the anti-malarial and tuberculosis study is performed in Indonesia, where they can easily collect certain microbes from the Borneo Islands, which is near Indonesia.

His laboratory consists of a step-by-step process that grows the bacteria and tests the different substances through a genetic, synthetic and chemical approach.

Some of the bacteria will sit in a vial as it grows (blue-green algae), and others are shaken and refrigerated (actinomycedes) to get the different varieties for testing.

"Not very many pharmaceutical companies are developing anti-malarial drugs because they can't make money," Mahmud said.

The Gates Foundation and other malarial venture institutes, like OTRADI, are working on a solution to the epidemic. Mahmud hopes that a cheaper drug will be available to put a halt to the deaths that occur every year in Africa.

"If we can develop drugs that can help them reduce their mortality of children, that would change the world," Mahmud said.

Theo Hendrickson, staff writer

news@dailybarometer.com, 737-2231

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