KarunaNews Story

A new antimalarial drug developed by Novartis is as effective as existing treatments and could help tackle rising drug resistance. The drug, called GanLum, was developed by the company and the Medicines for Malaria Venture, a non-profit. It was more than 97% effective at treating malaria in a phase III trial among 1,688 adults and children across 34 sites in 12 African countries. Malaria still kills more than 600,000 people annually, most of them children under 5 in sub-Saharan Africa. Existing treatments still work against the mosquito-borne disease – with an effectiveness of around 94% - but there is increasing concern about rising resistance to one of the key drugs used, artemisinin. GanLum works differently to previous antimalarials, and unlike many of those treatments also blocks transmission as it acts on the malaria parasite at the point where it can spread back from an infected human to the mosquito that bites them. Novartis will now apply for regulatory approval and expects to see GanLum available in countries within the next year to 18 months, on a non-profit basis.