Bioorganometallic Compounds with Antimalarial Targets: Inhibiting Hemozoin Formation

Abstract

About half of the world’s population is at risk of malaria, and in tropical countries it remains a major cause of morbidity and death in children. Drug resistance to current established antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine is driving the rise in malaria-attributed deaths. In the mid-1990s, two groups—in France and in Venezuela—probed the potential contribution of organometallic analogues as a means of discovering new antimalarial drugs. In the present review, key topics of organometallic antimalarials are outlined using examples from the literature. The interdisciplinary research environment of bioorganometallics allows researchers to investigate the whole spectrum of the drugs’ mechanisms of action. Targeting the digestive vacuole and inhibiting hemozoin formation is believed to be the main mechanism by which these drugs induce parasite death.