Problem: Malaria has become increasingly resistant to first-line drug therapies, but combination drugs containing artemisinin derivatives show nearly 100 percent effectiveness against the malaria parasite.5 Yet, at a price of approximately $2.20 per adult course,6 these drugs are still beyond the reach of the world's poorest people.
Solution: With a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a partnership between the Institute for OneWorld Health, Amyris Biotechnologies, sanofi-aventis, and the University of California, Berkeley is using synthetic biology to help reduce the cost of artemisinin, making life-saving artemisinin combination therapies more accessible to people in the developing world. |
