New medicines against malaria: demonstrating activity in man.

Medicines for Malaria Venture has partnered with the Pharmaceutical industry to develop the next generation of antimalarials, with two products registered, and two under review by the European Medicines Agency. In the long term, new classes of medicine will be needed to control and potentially eradicate the disease and to overcome emerging resistance. As a result of innovation in the discovery pipeline, there are now several new classes of therapies which are ready for testing for the first tim e in humans. The proposal is to speed up clinical development by investing in three types of protocols: a challenge model using human volunteers, a new Phase IIa design using low parasitaemia and dose de-escalation, and new combination trial designs. The requested funding of 1m per year for 2011-14 covers around 20 per cent of our costs, but is an endorsement of MMVs scientific approach and will be catalytic in helping us secure co-funding. The success measure is how much the process can be s treamlined, to save time and money, whilst maintaining the highest possible safety. The output will be new medicines shown to be active in humans, and ready to be used in pivotal clinical trials.