ARTEMISININ, a drug isolated from sweet wormwood, has finally been approved by global health agencies as the first line of treatment of malaria instead of quinine, to which Plasmodium is showing increased resistance. The treatment is given as a cocktail known as artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) and it has shown dramatic results. The drug was first isolated in 1965 by Chinese military researchers. The bulk is still difficult to get, even though the sweet wormwood cultivation has now spread to Vietnam and Korea. Even Indian companies like IPCA Laboratories and Cipla make ACTs. Global health agencies and donors like the US and the UK had not taken to ACT as it is dearer than the older drugs. At $2 a day for 3-5 days, ACT (Novartis-Coartem) would cost 10 times as much as the old drugs at about 20 cents a day. But recently Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria has given 11 countries grants to buy artemisinin and told 34 others to switch to new drugs. It would spend $450 million on the drugs over five years. The WHO estimates 100 million doses will be needed by late 2005. Recently, Ranbaxy Laboratories has signed an agreement with Medicines for Malaria Venture, Geneva, to develop a peroxide anti-malaria drug, a synthetic version of ACT. It is expected to be cheaper than the plant-based product. Kasim Mooktiar, vice-president (R&D), Ranbaxy, says: "The future of treatment for malaria will consist of the artemisinin class of compounds in combination therapy."