BioFocus DPI, a leading provider of gene-to-drug candidate discovery services, and the not-for-profit organization Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) announce the start of a collaboration to identify new natural product and small molecules that demonstrate anti-malarial activity.

Prior to the collaboration announced, MMV had acquired access to BioFocus DPI's natural product and SoftFocus compound collections, which gave hits with anti-malarial activity in disease-specific assays. The aim of the current collaboration is to determine which of the small molecules in these collections show activity, with the intention to further optimize these hits as anti-malarial therapeutics.

"At BioFocus DPI we are pleased that our natural product and SoftFocus collections have yielded hits showing anti-malarial activity in multiple infected erythrocyte assays. These results show how well our libraries are suited for finding new leads in infectious disease," stated Dr Chris Newton, Senior VP of BioFocus DPI.

"Screening of BioFocus DPI's compound collections has generated many potential anti-malarial product leads of high quality. This is an exciting find, as MMV is proactively seeking for its portfolio new anti-malarial compounds that can be developed into effective medicines to not only treat the lethal falciparum malaria, but also tackle artemisinin resistance, stop malaria transmission and treat the rarer plasmodium vivax malaria. We look forward to working with BioFocus DPI to develop novel anti-malarial therapeutics that will help ultimately eradicate this fatal disease," said Tim Wells, chief scientific officer MMV.

Natural compounds are a major source of new medicines, as nearly half of drugs brought to market in the last 20 years originated from compounds derived from nature. With their unique organic characteristics, natural compounds are especially important for drug development against certain target classes.

BioFocus DPI aims to expand its partners' drug pipelines by accelerating the gene-to-candidate discovery process.

Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) is a not-for-profit organization created to discover, develop and deliver effective and affordable anti-malarial drugs through public-private partnerships.