Recent progress in the development of anti-malarial quinolones

Richard M Beteck, Frans J Smit, Richard K Haynes, David D N’Da

Available anti-malarial tools have over the ten-year period, 2002 to 2012, dramatically reduced the number of fatalities attributed to malaria, from one million to less than six-hundred and thirty thousand. Although fewer people recently die from malaria, emerging resistance to the first-line anti-malarial drugs, namely artemisinins in combination with quinolines and arylmethanols, necessitates the urgent development of new anti-malarial drugs to curb the disease. The quinolones remain a promising class of compounds, with some demonstrating strong in vitro activity against the malaria parasite. This review presents the progress made in the development of potential anti-malarial quinolones, since 2008. The efficacy of these compounds against both asexual blood stages and other stages of the malaria parasite, the nature of putative targets, and a comparison of these properties with anti-malarial drugs currently in clinical use, are discussed.