Protein-Drug Interaction Studies for Development of Drugs Against Plasmodium falciparum

Title: Protein-Drug Interaction Studies for Development of Drugs Against Plasmodium falciparum

Volume: 10 Issue: 3

Author(s): Walter Filgueira de Azevedo Jr., Rafael Andrade Caceres, Ivani Pauli, Luis Fernando S.M. Timmers, Guy Barros Barcellos, Kelen Beiestorf Rocha and Milena Botelho Pereira Soares

Affiliation:

Keywords: Plasmodium falciparum, antimalarial drugs, structure-based virtual screening, protein kinases, enoyl reductase, chorismate synthase

Abstract: The study of protein-drug interaction is of pivotal importance to understand the structural features essential for ligand affinity. The explosion of information about protein structures has paved the way to develop structure-based virtual screening approaches. Parasitic protein kinases have been pointed out as potential targets for antiparasitic development. The identification of protein kinases in the Plasmodium falciparum genome has opened the possibility to test new families of inhibitors as potential antimalarial drugs. In addition, other key enzymes which play roles in biosynthetic pathways, such as enoyl reductase and chorismate synthase, can be valuable targets for drug development. This review is focused on these protein targets that may help to materialize new generations of antimalarial drugs.

Cite this article as:

de Azevedo Jr. Filgueira Walter, Caceres Andrade Rafael, Pauli Ivani, Timmers S.M. Luis Fernando, Barcellos Barros Guy, Rocha Beiestorf Kelen and Soares Botelho Pereira Milena, Protein-Drug Interaction Studies for Development of Drugs Against Plasmodium falciparum, Current Drug Targets 2009; 10 (3) . https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/138945009787581104