Basic research on anti-malarial active plants and active constituents of anti-schistosomiasis in Yunnan

Schistosomiasis and malaria are serious diseases seriously harmful to people’s health. Although a few drugs like praziquantel and artemisinin can currently be used all over the world to control the diseases, however, these medicines have significant defects such as severe side effects and the molecular structural similarity which can lead to great risk that all the drugs may lose the anti-parasite effects together due to parasite drug-resistance increasing. Therefore, to develop new generation of anti-parasite drugs as the complementary and alternative drugs is of great significance for the strategic security to prevent and control the parasite diseases. According to the rules for drug development, it is definitively an important way to start researches from natural products. Yunnan is rich in medicinal plant resources. By systematical integration and screens, it is quite possible to find potential candidates or lead compounds for new generation of anti-parasite drugs from Yunnan plant resources. Based on such conception, this project plans to collect more than 400 different plant samples from most plant families distributed in Yunnan. By in vitro assays, anti-schistosomal and anti-malarial activities of the samples will be evaluated, and 8-10 plant samples which show strong bioactivities will be selected for further study to determine the major bioactive constituents. 1-2 compounds which have best activities in the in vitro assays and low cute toxicity will be subjected to animal study to evaluate the in vivo anti-schistosomal and anti-malarial activities. Moreover, the structure-active relationship will be studied as well by synthetic chemistry and in vitro bioactive assays. The purpose of this study is to lay research foundations for the development of new generation of anti-schistosomal and anti-malarial drug in the future.

Basic Science
Drug-based Strategies

Jan 2015 — Dec 2018

$70,169

China