The state of the art in anti-malarial drug discovery and development

Abstract

Malaria is one of the most prevalent and devastating infectious diseases of our time. Yet, unfortunately, apart from artemisinin combination therapies there are relatively few effective treatments for Plasmodium falciparum and only one treatment for the radical cure of Plasmodium vivax. Novel classes of antimalarial medicines are urgently needed given the long-term inevitability of resistance to current therapies and the need for drugs that are well tolerated by all. This review summarises the antimalarials developed and registered thus far, as well as describing some of the new small molecule therapy approaches being developed as a contribution towards the malaria eradication agenda.