Keywords

Antimalarial, plasmodium, marine natural products

Abstract

Malaria, the disease caused by Plasmodium sp., claims the lives of over 1 million people every year, with Plasmodium falciparum causing the highest morbidity. Rapidly acquiring drug resistance is threatening to exhaust our antimalarial drug arsenal and already requires the utilization of combination drug therapy in most cases. The global need for novel antimalarial chemical scaffolds has never been greater. Screening of natural product libraries is known to have higher hit rates than synthetic chemical libraries. This elevated hit rate is somewhat attributed to the greater biodiversity available in natural products. Marine life is the most biodiverse system on the planet, containing 34 of the 36 known phyla of life, and is expected to be a rich source of novel chemotypes. In collaboration with the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Ft. Pierce we have screened a library of over 2,800 marine macroorganism peak fractions against Plasmodium falciparum using the SYBR green I fluorescence-based assay. In this screening process we have identified six compounds from five novel chemical scaffolds all of which have low micromolar to submicromolar IC50 values and excellent selectivity indices. Additionally, one of these chemical scaffolds, the bis(indolyl)imidazole, was selected for further in vitro pharmacological and structure-activity relationship (SAR) profiling, key steps in the challenging process of identifying a new antimalarial drug lead compound.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2012

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Chakrabarti, Debopam

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Medicine

Department

Molecular Biology and Microbiology

Degree Program

Biotechnology

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0004792

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004792

Language

English

Release Date

6-15-2018

Length of Campus-only Access

5 years

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Medicine, Medicine -- Dissertations, Academic

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