New drug by UC researcher bites back at mosquitoes

Claudia Doman

Professor Suresh Mahalingam soon to conduct clinical trials for new drug in India

16 August: When struck by the mosquito-borne dengue virus at 15, Suresh Mahalingam never thought he would grow up to lead the fight against these viruses as part of a small, but determined team at the University of Canberra.

“I grew up in a little village in Malaysia and my house was next to a river,” Professor Mahalingam, now a renowned virologist, said.“When I got sick my parents took me to hospital, but a friend from school died from the disease.”

Diseases caused by mosquito-borne viruses are increasing at an alarming rate worldwide. In Australia, the Ross River virus, affects 5000-8000 people each year.

Globally, one of the worst offenders is the debilitating Chikungunya virus which affects millions of people across Asia and Africa, and has started to appear in Europe.

This virus hasn’t arrived in Australia, but according to Professor Mahalingam “it’s only a matter of time.”

Relief however, could be in sight for those suffering from the arthritic pain and inflammation caused by these viral infections. Professor Mahalingam is soon to start clinical trials for a drug that could help alleviate these symptoms.

With funding of €50,000 and support from the Italian company, Angelini Pharmaceuticals, he will conduct clinical trials of the drug Bindarit in two hospitals in western India.

He estimates the drug could be in use within the next couple of years, if the clinical trials show positive effects. Developing a new drug from scratch would have taken a decade or more.

Professor Mahalingam is also currently working together with European and Asian colleagues towards the development of new antiviral drugs and vaccines that not only could relieve the symptoms of the disease, but combat the actual Chikungunya virus.

Only a few months ago, he joined a group of researchers from Scotland, Germany, France, Estonia, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia to embark on a quest to do some brainstorming, pool their resources, and work towards creating a drug or vaccine to control the mosquito-borne diseases that causes arthritis.

“There is great potential to design new antiviral strategies to control and eradicate mosquito-borne viruses, to find innovative ways for public health officials to fight outbreaks more effectively, to better understand the viral elements of the diseases and to predict where they might emerge next,” Professor Mahalingam said.