Plant-Derived Antimalarial Agents: From Crude Extracts To Isolated Bioactive Compounds
- Author:
A Wan Omar
;
I Patimah
- Publication Type:Review
- Keywords:
Malaria;
plant products;
Plasmodium;
antiplasmodial activity
- From:Malaysian Journal of Medicine and Health Sciences
2011;7(2):87-98
- CountryMalaysia
- Language:English
-
Abstract:
Despite decades of intense research, malaria remains a deadly disease of the developing worlds. Drugresistance
to limited available antimalarials, in part, has contributed to the persistence of this infectious
disease. Likewise, the use of antimalarials such as artemisinin, though effective in global malaria control
programs, is hampered by high cost and limited supply. Therefore, identification of an antimalarial
drug that is easy to isolate and produce, inexpensive, and demonstrates little toxicity across a diverse
population represents the ideal agent needed for global malaria control programs and eradication of
this deadly disease. This review discusses several antimalarial compounds containing unique structural
composition that have been isolated and characterized from plant sources. These compounds have
exhibited promising antimalarial activities in vitro and in vivo. However, limitations such as toxicity,
low bioavailability and/or poor solubility have probably restricted the scope of use for several plant
products in humans. Nevertheless, plants provide novel leads, which can be developed into safe drugs
by synthetic strategies as exemplified by artemether and quinoline class of antimalarials. Therefore,
plant bioactive compounds described herein provide useful alternatives, which could be modulated
to obtain antimalarials active against not only drug-sensitive, but also drug-resistant and multi-drug
resistant strains of Plasmodium. In this direction, semi synthetic approaches to newer and modified
antimalarials have provided useful insights into their applicability in antimalarial drug discovery.
