1-2-4-trioxane and Malaria--Falciparum

The emergence and spread in Southeast Asia of

Topics: Antimalarials; Artemisinins; Cambodia; Cell Survival; Drug Resistance; Heterocyclic Compounds; Humans; Malaria, Falciparum; Mutation, Missense; Plasmodium falciparum; Protozoan Proteins; Virulence

The emerging cases of artemisinin and endoperoxide drug resistance are becoming a challenge to antimalarial drug discovery and therapy. The exact mode of action of this class of antimalarials is still unknown which presents a bottleneck for the understanding of drug resistance as well as designing new lead molecules of this class. To address this issue, the molecular docking and scoring studies of a homogeneous and structurally diverse dataset of artemisinin derived trioxanes have been performed on each of the two plausible targets of this class viz. heme and PfATP6. Since the crystal structure of PfATP6 is unknown, its homology model was built utilizing the human SERCA1 protein crystallized structure as a template. The binding energies of the heme binding site of the docked artemisinin derivatives showed very good correlation with the antimalarial activity (r(2) = 0.69), whereas the same study with the binding site of pfATP6 showed a very poor correlation (r(2) = 0.12), suggesting heme to be the possible target of artemisinin derived endoperoxides.

Topics: Amino Acid Sequence; Antimalarials; Artemisinins; Calcium-Transporting ATPases; Drug Design; Heme; Heterocyclic Compounds; Humans; Malaria, Falciparum; Models, Molecular; Molecular Docking Simulation; Molecular Sequence Data; Plasmodium falciparum; Sequence Alignment

Malaria and cancer cause the death of millions of people every year. To combat these two diseases, it is important that new pharmaceutically active compounds have the ability to overcome multidrug resistance in cancer and Plasmodium falciparum strains. In search of effective anti-cancer and anti-malaria hybrids that possess improved properties compared to their parent compounds, a series of novel 1,2,4-trioxane-based hybrids incorporating egonol and/or ferrocene fragments were synthesized and tested in vitro against P. falciparum strains, CCRF-CEM cells and the multidrug-resistant P-glycoprotein-over-expressing CEM/ADR5000 cells. The most active compounds against P. falciparum strains were artesunic acid homodimers 12 and 13 (IC50 of 0.32 and 0.30 nM, respectively), whereas novel hybrids 7 (1,2,4-trioxane-ferrocene-egonol), 9 (1,2,4-trioxane-ferrocene) and 11 (artesunic acid-egonol) showed a remarkable cytotoxicity toward CCRF-CEM cells (IC50 of 0.07, 0.25 and 0.18 μM, respectively). A cooperative and synergistic effect of the three moieties 1,2,4-trioxane, ferrocene and egonol in hybrid molecule 7 is significant and is obviously stronger than in hybrids 9 (1,2,4-trioxane-ferrocene) and 11 (artesunic acid-egonol), which comprises of only two of the three considered parent compounds. Interestingly, hybrid 9 containing a 1,2,4-trioxane and a ferrocene fragment has shown to be the most effective among the studied hybrids against the tested multidrug-resistant leukemia CEM/ADR5000 cells (IC50 of 0.57 μM) and possesses a degree of cross-resistance of 2.34.

Topics: Antimalarials; Antineoplastic Agents; Benzofurans; Cell Lineage; Drug Resistance, Multiple; Drug Resistance, Neoplasm; Ferrous Compounds; Heterocyclic Compounds; Humans; Leukemia; Malaria, Falciparum; Metallocenes; Plasmodium falciparum

First synthesis of novel coumarin-trioxane hybrids is reported. The synthesis was achieved via condensation of β-hydroxyhydroperoxides with coumarinic-aldehydes in presence of p-toluenesulfonic acid in good yields and the novel hybrids were evaluated for their antimalarial activity both in vitro and in vivo.

Topics: Aldehydes; Animals; Antimalarials; Benzenesulfonates; Coumarins; Erythrocytes; Heterocyclic Compounds; Humans; Inhibitory Concentration 50; Malaria, Falciparum; Mice; Peroxides; Plasmodium falciparum; Plasmodium yoelii; Structure-Activity Relationship

A pharmacophore model has been developed for determining the essential structural requirements for antimalarial activity from the eight series of substituted 1,2,4-trioxanes. The best pharmacophore model possessing two aliphatic hydrophobic, one aromatic hydrophobic, one hydrogen-bond (H-bond) acceptor, and one H-bond acceptor (lipid) feature for antimalarial activity showed an excellent correlation coefficient for the training (r(2)(training) = 0.85) and a fair correlation coefficient for the test set (r(2)(test) = 0.51) molecules. The model predicts well to other known substituted 1,2,4-trioxanes including those which either are drugs or are undergoing clinical trials. In order to further validate this model, five substituted 1,2,4-trioxanes were synthesized from the generated focused library and screened for antimalarial activity. The observed activity of these molecules was consistent with the pharmacophore model, suggesting that the model may be useful in the design of potent antimalarial agents.

Topics: Antimalarials; Heterocyclic Compounds; Humans; Malaria, Falciparum; Models, Biological; Models, Molecular; Plasmodium falciparum; Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship