Anti-malarial drugs: how effective are they against Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes?

Malaria Journal

Research

Donald L Gardiner¹  Katharine R Trenholme²  Christopher L Peatey³  Didier Leroy⁴ 

[1] Malaria Biology Laboratory, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, 300 Herston Rd, 4006, Queensland, Herston, Australia;School of Biomolecular and Physical Sciences, Griffith University, Queensland, Herston, Australia;Malaria Biology Laboratory, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, 300 Herston Rd, 4006, Queensland, Herston, Australia;School of Medicine, University of Queensland, Queensland, Herston, Australia;Malaria Biology Laboratory, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, 300 Herston Rd, 4006, Queensland, Herston, Australia;School of Molecular and Microbial Sciences University of Queensland, Queensland, Herston, Australia;Medicines for Malaria Venture, PO Box 1826, Route de Pré-Bois 20, 1215, Geneva 15, Switzerland;

关键词: Plasmodium falciparum;    Gametocyte;    Anti-malarial drugs;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2875-11-34

 received in 2011-10-10, accepted in 2012-02-06,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundRecent renewed emphasis on the eradication of malaria has highlighted the need for more tools with which to achieve this ambitious goal. One high priority area is the need to determine the gametocytocidal activity of both currently used anti-malarial drugs and those in the development pipeline. However, testing the activity of compounds against Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes is technically challenging both in vivo and in vitro.MethodsHere the use of a simple robust assay to screen a panel of currently used and experimental anti-malarial drugs against mature P. falciparum gametocytes is described.ResultsEight of 44 compounds tested reduced gametocyte viability by at least 50% and three showed IC50 values in nM range.ConclusionsThere is a need to identify new compounds with activity against late stage gametocytes and the information provided by this in vitro assay is a valuable first step, which can guide future clinical studies.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Peatey et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.