How should we assess new antimalarial drugs?

In recent years, the use of a three-day course of an antimalarial treatment called ACT (artemisinin-based combination therapy) in over 40 countries that face endemic malaria has shown great success in curing this deadly disease.

In a policy paper in this week's PLoS Medicine, a team of researchers led by Steffen Borrmann (Kenya Medical Research Institute/Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Kilifi, Kenya) argues that the success of ACT "demands a new approach to the ways in which we assess new antimalarial drugs during clinical development and judge their potential utility for public health deployment." The authors discuss the design and interpretation of clinical trials for new antimalarial drugs in the era of ACT. The policy paper is further discussed in an expert commentary by Colin Sutherland (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK).