Current Antimalarial Therapies and Advances in the Development of Semi-Synthetic Artemisinin Derivatives

An Acad Bras Cienc. 2018;90(1 Suppl 2):1251-1271. doi: 10.1590/0001-3765201820170830.

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, malaria remains one of the biggest public health problems in the world. The development of resistance is a current concern, mainly because the number of safe drugs for this disease is limited. Artemisinin-based combination therapy is recommended by the World Health Organization to prevent or delay the onset of resistance. Thus, the need to obtain new drugs makes artemisinin the most widely used scaffold to obtain synthetic compounds. This review describes the drugs based on artemisinin and its derivatives, including hybrid derivatives and dimers, trimers and tetramers that contain an endoperoxide bridge. This class of compounds is of extreme importance for the discovery of new drugs to treat malaria.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Antimalarials / chemical synthesis
  • Antimalarials / pharmacology*
  • Artemisinins / chemical synthesis
  • Artemisinins / pharmacology*
  • Drug Combinations
  • Folic Acid Antagonists / chemical synthesis
  • Folic Acid Antagonists / pharmacology
  • Humans
  • Molecular Structure
  • Plasmodium falciparum / drug effects*
  • Quinolines / chemical synthesis
  • Quinolines / pharmacology
  • Structure-Activity Relationship

Substances

  • Antimalarials
  • Artemisinins
  • Drug Combinations
  • Folic Acid Antagonists
  • Quinolines
  • quinoline