The formation of hemozoin (malaria pigment) has been proposed as an ideal drug target for antimalarial screening programs. In this study, we used an improved, cost-effective and high-throughput spectrophotometric assay to screen plant extracts for finding novel antimalarial plant sources. Fifteen extracts with different polarity from three Iranian Artemisia species, A. ciniformis, A. biennis an...

The Indian medicinal herb Nyctanthes arbor-tristis Linn. (NAT) is well-known. It often referred to as "Parijat" and a critically endangered species in India. Crude extracts refined chemicals from seeds, such 4-hydroxy-hexahydrobenzofuran-7-one, 6-hydroxyloganin, Arbortristoside A, polysaccharide the leaves, Naringenin stem, may all be sources of active pharmacological agents. In Ayurveda, plant...

Antimalarial agents have been widely used as disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs in the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and other rheumatological diseases, although their mechanism of action has not yet been fully defined. It is known, however, that effective response to treatment is variable among patients. Thus, the identification of genetic predictors of treatment response ...

The Hartree-Fock method and the 6-31G** basis set were employed to calculate the molecular properties of artemisinin and 20 derivatives with antimalarial activity. Maps of molecular electrostatic potential (MEPs) and molecular docking were used to investigate the interaction between ligands and the receptor (heme). Principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis were employed to ...

The measurement of intracellular ion concentrations, and the screening of chemical agents to identify molecules targeting ion transport, has traditionally involved low-throughput techniques. Here we present a novel HPLC method that allows the rapid, high-sensitivity measurement of cell Na(+) and K(+) content, demonstrating its utility by monitoring the ionic changes induced in the intracellular...

Malaria is still the most destructive and dangerous parasitic infection in many tropical and subtropical countries. The burden of this disease is getting worse, mainly due to the increasing resistance of Plasmodium falciparum against the widely available antimalarial drugs. There is an urgent need for new, more affordable and accessible antimalarial agents possessing original modes of action. N...

Parasite resistance to antimalarial drugs is a serious threat to human health, and novel agents that act on enzymes essential for parasite metabolism, such as proteases, are attractive targets for drug development. Recent studies have shown that clinically utilized human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) protease inhibitors can inhibit the in vitro growth of Plasmodium falciparum at or below concent...

Malaria is an infectious disease that arises from the presence of parasitic protozoa of the genus plasmodium within the RBC. The disease is confined to tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world and is transmitted by the female anopheles mosquito. The bites of a mosquito inject the parasite into the bloodstream and this migrates to the liver and other organs where they multiply. With varyin...