Making lowcost antimalaria drugs!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090306172619.htm

Malaria is a deadly that has been around since 4BC. Researchers have been looking for a way to produce the antimalaria drug, artemisinin. It is the strongest antimalaria drug available but also very expensive to obtain. The reason why it is so expensive to obtain artemisinin is because the drug is produced only in the wormwood tree. The wormwood tree only produces it when the agricultural and climatological conditions are met.
Because this is the case, people in Africa and South America can't obtain this drug to treat Malaria because it cost too much to make. Researchers have devise a way to get yeast to produce a precursor to the drug called artemisinic acid. This acid can be made into artemisinin very easily. If Researchers can get microorganisms to produce it for us we would have a very easy way to obtain artemisinin. Researchers took genes from the wormwood and from E-coli and were able to fuse it with the genes of the yeast. This made the yeast produce arteminsinic acid.
Researchers also hope by having a large amount of artemisinin at their disposable they can control how it is given to the people. Many bio companies give monotherapy for the disease which means they just give people this drug and that increases the chance of Malaria becoming resistant to it. The researchers want to make the artemisin one of a few other drugs applied to fight off Malaria and keep the resistance to it to a minimal.

Also, artemisinin is important because it releases oxygen radicals which can fight off the Malaria.