[For new antimalarial drugs: the methods of fundamental research]

Research in new antimalarial drugs has too long been limited to a only pharmacological approach with its four main modalities: isolation of compounds from medicinal plants, oriented or not screening of varied molecules, molecular ingeniery modifying structure of wellknown drugs in order to improve their efficacy, products reversing resistance to antimalarial drugs (anti-Pfmdr). Important success has been obtained by these ways but the possibility of new discoveries seems to be limited. It is time certainly to concentrate efforts no more on the drug itself but on the real target i.e. Plasmodium or malaria disease. Our knowledge of Plasmodium biology and of pathophysiological mechanisms in malaria are still very limited. This kind of study comes up against many difficulties (plasmodial intracellular parasitism, parasitic specificity of Plasmodium parasites in Man, etc). Nevertheless, only a huge effort in fundamental research will open new perspectives in antimalarial therapeutics by identifying possible targets for new compounds from which pharmaccutal industry will be able to develop new medicines.