Wednesday, October 5 2005 10:45 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: An international initiative has developed two new combination drugs against deadly brain infecting, chloroquine-resistant malaria parasite and is in talks with Indian Council of Medical Research to start clinical trials in India to bring the drugs to the country.

The combination drugs have been developed by the `Drugs for Neglected Diseases intitiative (DNDi)', a drug development organisation established in 2003. ICMR is a founding member of the group.

"The new drugs called fixed-dose artesunate-based combination therapies - one that has artesunate and amodiaquine as its constituents and the other that has artesunate and mefloquine - have undergone clinical trials in Burkina Faso and Thailand," Simon Croft, DNDi's Director for Research and Development told reporters here last evening.

"DNDi hopes to conduct similar clinical trials in India in collaboration with ICMR to assess their effectiveness in malaria patients," he said.

Talks are on with ICMR towards this goal and clinical trials may start next year, he said.

New combination drugs are important for India as some parts of the country are encountering the problem of resistance to commonly used drug Chloroquine.