Antimalarial drugs: discovery, mechanism of action, and drug resistance

Malaria is one of the three most deadly globally infectious diseases that seriously endangers human health and life. After decades of research, drug discovery, and development, malaria still significantly impacts human health and the economy. A substantial group of the world’s scientists focuses on the discovery and development of new effective drug candidates against malaria. Due to the frequent use of antimalarial drugs, inadequate or incomplete treatments of active infections have resulted in the drug resistance against Plasmodium falciparum. Malaria drug resistance has devastating consequences for the human population and challenges the scientific community to develop a new antimalarial regime. Artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) are currently the most efficient treatment against malaria. However, drug resistance was observed for ACT-based combination therapy, and it has generated great concern for malarial treatment. Therefore there is an urgent need to develop more effective antimalarial drugs against drug-resistant malaria. This chapter discusses the various drugs against malaria, their mechanism of action, mechanism of drug resistance, and possible solutions to deal with the drug-resistant conditions. Many specific targets have been identified that may facilitate the development of new drug moieties that may overcome the currently prescribed drug-resistant conditions.