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recent study revealing that malaria parasites are more like plants than animals has triggered the idea of treating the illness with herbicidal medicine.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates some 500 million people contract malaria and
1 million people die due to the illness each year. Currently there is no vaccine and the parasites are resistant to almost all existing medicines. According to the WHO, malaria in Indonesia is concentrated in Papua, Maluku, Nusa Tenggara, Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Sumatra.

Geoff McFadden from the University of Melbourne’s School of Botany said his research revealed that plasmodium, a malaria parasite, belonged to a eukaryotic group that also contained algae and that malaria was a descendent of primitive algae that converted from symbiotic to parasitic around 500 million years ago.

“We found main genetic tracks that resemble plant metabolism in the malaria parasite. This fact informs us that the parasite moved from its life in the ocean as a unicellular plant to a parasitic way of life in human blood,” he said.

McFadden’s research shows that the malaria parasite has a plastid, an organ which manages functions including photosynthesis, making amino acid, fats, isoprenes and heme (iron complex).

He said that the research gave insight on how to fight the illness with new medicines that contained an herbicide that was designed to kill weeds.

“The way plants make fats, heme and isoprenes is radically different to how animals make them. So instead of treating malaria with medicines for animals, we should treat it with medicines for plants.

“We found that the plastid pathway in the malaria parasite is sensitive to antibacterials and herbicides,” he said.

He said that while many herbicides were toxic, there were also other herbicides that did not harm humans but were still effective to fight malaria. His team has tested the new drugs on mice, and the results have been positive with the drugs inhibiting plastids from branching and dividing.

McFadden said his team was working to optimize and further test the drug compound so it could reach the blood and kill the parasites. He said that the drugs had to be easy to deliver because most people preferred to have tablets rather than injections.

“If the new drug is successful, it will be nice to share it with our neighbors, including Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste,” he said.

Sangkot Marzuki, chairman of Indonesian Academics of Science (AIPI) and director of government-owned Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology, said that McFadden’s new research opened doors to develop new drugs for malaria.

“The research creates new targets for new drugs. There are herbicides that are safe for humans, but the concentration in the drugs is high. We also try to make new drugs out of the drugs that are declared malaria resistant,” he said.

He said that Indonesia had yet to see drug-resistant malaria. He said that according to the WHO, for the Asia region, drug-resistant malaria was found on the border of Thailand and Cambodia.

McFadden said that there was still a possibility that the parasites could become resistant to the new drugs.

However, he was optimistic that if researchers knew how the malaria parasites grew, they would be able to develop a strategy to minimize the resistance.

“We need a different model to combat malaria, with all stakeholders such as the government and private sectors such as banks participating in the funding. If we can control malaria, we can improve welfare,” he said.