The current status of antimalarial drug research with special reference to application of QSAR models

Malaria, the most virulent parasitic disease, has become a devastating health problem in tropical and subtropical regions, especially in Africa, due to favorable temperature and rainfall conditions for the development of the causative vector. Due to the spread of multidrug resistance to the marketed antimalarial drugs including the "magic bullet" artemisinin, discovery and development of new antimalarial drugs is one of the utmost challenges. Different government and non-government chemical regulatory authorities have recommended the application of non-animal, alternative techniques and in particular, in silico, methods in order to provide information about the basic physicochemical properties as well as the ecological and human health effects of chemicals before they reach into the market for public use. In this aspect, application of chemometric methods along with structure-based approaches may be useful for the design and discovery of new antimalarial compounds. The quantitative structureactivity relationship (QSAR) along with molecular docking and pharmacophore modeling techniques play a crucial role in the field of drug design. QSAR focuses on the chemical attributes influencing the activity and thereby allows synthesis of selective potential candidate molecules. In this communication, we have reviewed the QSAR reports along with some pharmacophore modeling and docking studies of antimalarial agents published during the year 2011 to 2014 and attempted to focus on the importance of physicochemical properties and structural features required for antimalarial activity of different chemical classes of compounds. Note that this is not an exhaustive review and all the given examples should be considered as the representative ones. The reader will gain an insight of the current status of QSAR and related in silico models developed for different classes of antimalarial compounds. This review suggests that combination of both ligand and structure-based drug designing approaches may be a promising tool for the discovery and development of new molecules with potential antimalarial activity.