Welcome to the e-malaria Project!

Project Update

The project isn't currently being supported at the moment - but we hope to return soon with new funding and a bigger and better project website.

Please feel free to look around the pages on this site, but unfortunately we can't make the interactive part available at this time.

In the event of inquiry please contact the project team at emalaria@soton.ac.uk.

What's the problem?

Malaria kills over a million people a year, and it's spreading. The world needs new drugs to combat the disease. As resistance to existing drugs grows and global warming increases the range of the mosquito that need is increasing.

So what has this got to do with you?

Well we need you to design the drugs! This project asks you to design a small polypeptide, which we run a series of calculations on to determine its possible use as an anti-malarial drug. At this stage only four schools are signed up as pilot centres for the project. That means you are one of only about 100 people taking part in the project. You have a huge ability to effect the outcomes of the project at this stage.

What's in it for you?

Well we've provided some materials for you connected with the science involved in the project, which should help with revision. There are also opportunities for visits to Southampton and in school talks from project members. But the best thing by far is you could discover a brand new drug. The project has the ability to get promising compounds made and tested, so you never know one of your compounds could be a major drug one day!

This isn't a just another teaching exercise... this is a real life problem, involving real life science which hopes to produce a real solution. And you will be a part of the team that does this.

Where to start?

The navigation bar on the left will give you a flavour of what is available on the site. Probably the best place to start is the design tools, which will allow you to make and submit your first molecules. There is a forum where you can talk to other people working on the project and ask questions which team members will answer if you get stuck or want to know more. Each page also contains a set of links to other websites for more information.

Links

The following links may prove interesting:

Requirements

Most 21st century web browsers should have no problems with this site. The finest experience can be enjoyed with a Gecko-based browser, such as Firefox, Mozilla, Epiphany or Galeon. Windows Internet Explorer version 6 and above is known to work, along with the Apple Safari browser (version 1.2.4). Cookies, Java and Javascript must be enabled in your browser for the site to work. Sun Java 1.4 and the Microsoft Java which comes standard with older versions of Windows XP will work.

Acknowledgments

This project was made possible by the generous support of the Join Information Systems Committee and the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Center