Toothpaste ingredient could fight malaria

In a study in the journal Scientific Reports, scientists from Britain's Cambridge University who used the AI robot to conduct high-throughput screening said the ingredient, triclosan, showed the potential to interrupt malaria infections at two critical stages - in the liver and the blood.

Malaria kills around half a million people every year, the vast majority of them children in the poorest parts of Africa. The disease can be treated with a number of drugs, but resistance to these medicines is increasing, raising the risk that some strains may become untreatable in the future. With the discovery, scientists now hope to develop a new drug to fight those strains which are battling back.