After an 11-year effort to find a substance to develop a new drug to tackle malaria, the hard work of Chawanee Thongpanchang, a researcher at the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (Biotec), has resulted in the discovery of a synthetic substance that can reduce the drug-resistant properties of the disease on a laboratory scale.

The 34-year-old doctoral researcher in organic chemistry has devoted over a decade to research into developing a new drug to tackle a disease which is resistant to the existing drugs. She believes that what she's doing could bring a better quality of life to people, especially those who suffer from malaria in underdeveloped countries.

Malaria is a major problem in tropical regions. Around 300 million people around the world are infected by malaria annually and around one million people die from it. Most of them are children under five years of age.

"As the patients are mostly in underdeveloped countries, pharmaceutical companies are not interested in new drug developments for this unprofitable market. We hope this research project will help people survive the disease," she said.

Chawanee is part of a research team at Biotec developing a new drug to cure malaria. This year she became the first Thai woman researcher to receive international research funds from the L'Oreal's For Women in Science project. The project gives funds to 15 female researchers around the world who conduct beneficial research projects.

For the past ten years, Chawanee has spent almost ten hours a day in her laboratory, mixing and testing substances to get what she wanted.

"It's really hard work to mix and match to find a proper substance that has the required properties," she said.

In the project, Chawanee used anti-folat, a synthetic substance which is used in existing malaria drugs, and adjusted its molecular structure. She said with the new anti-flolat structure, she found she could stop the working process of the flolat enzyme, making the new substance better able tackle the disease.  

The findings work well in the laboratory. Chawanee now wants to test the substance at a higher level. She is now studying a technique to double the quantity of the substance for further drug development. The two-year funding Chawanee received from the L'Oreal project will be used for further study of this process.

Chawanee will go to the Organic Chemistry Institute at Zurich University in Switzerland, which has expertise in the process of scaling up substances, to study a technique that could help her project.

After two years, she said she would be able to scale up the substance for development of a malaria drug.

he substance will also be tested in animals to observe how it affects drug-resistant disease as well as its toxic properties before a clinical trial in humans.

"I have to do more study to make sure the new substance, which works well in my lab, can eventually be used to develop a new malaria drug," she said.