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Medicinal chemistry

A worthy adversary for malaria

Nature volume 430, pages 838–839 (2004)Cite this article

A remarkable set of antimalarial drug candidates has been developed by an international collaboration of scientists, using the age-old Chinese herbal medicine artemisinin as a template.

Nearly two billion people live in areas where malaria is endemic, and the incidence of this disease is increasing dramatically, mainly because many malaria-parasite strains have become resistant to the available drugs1. The devastating spread of parasite resistance has prompted the worldwide search for new classes of effective antimalarial drugs. On page 900 of this issue, Vennerstrom and colleagues2 describe the development of a new class of synthetic drug related to the natural antimalarial product artemisinin.

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Figure 1: Artemisinin and its analogues.

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  1. Departments of Chemistry and of Pharmacology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7ZD, UK

    Paul M. O'Neill

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  1. Paul M. O'Neill
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O'Neill, P. A worthy adversary for malaria. Nature 430, 838–839 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/430838a

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