Potential Antimalarials from Tropical Plants and Natural Products

Malaria is caused by Plasmodium, a protozoan parasite transmitted by anopheles mosquitoes, and was responsible for 438 000 deaths worldwide in 2015 according to the last World Malaria report.1 The resistance of parasites to available and affordable medicines has become a widespread problem in exposed countries, making the search of new antimalarial compounds still necessary. As the immeasurable therapeutic potential of plants is well established2, natural products could be an interesting source of new antimalarial drugs. Indeed, according Newmann and Cragg, more than 60% of the antiparasitic drugs discovered between 1981 and 2014 were unaltered naturals products (12.5%), natural products derivatives (31.3%) and synthetic drugs with a natural product pharmacophore (18.8%).3 Then, the pharmacological and phytochemical study of plants, especially from traditional pharmacopoeias can be of first interest to discovered new antimalarial compound and also to valorize the traditional knowledge.
The first part of the talk will concern some examples of results obtained in the lab : the in vivo activity of strychnogucine B, which was isolated from strychnos icaja and semi-synthetized, the optimization of ellagic acid as a lead in the treatment of malaria and the validation of MIT from Mezoneuron benthamianum. In the second part of the talk, the work about Poupartia borbonica, an endemic plant from Reunion Island studied in the framework of a collaboration with the University of Reunion Island will be presented.