It is true that great strides have been made in understanding antimalarial drug resistance at a molecular level, and it is also true that this information is now turning out to be of great value in developing new, inexpensive, secondline antimalarials. 'Molecular medicine', well developed for western cancer and cardiology clinics, has (in theory) finally come to the malaria clinic -genes that dictate how the disease might respond to therapy have now been identified, and additional molecular tools developed with that knowledge are leading to new clinical successes. The function of proteins encoded by these genes is becoming understood. High-throughput screening methods such as the SybrGreen assay have led to fast, inexpensive ways to screen for novel antimalarials active against CQR malaria, at least at the pre-clinical stage. Multiple plasmodial genomes have become available, giving us unique insight into comparative genomics and many new drug targets to explore. New anti malarial drug leads are indeed rapidly appearing.