Translation of liver stage activity of M5717, a Plasmodium elongation factor 2 inhibitor: from bench to bedside

Abstract Background Targeting the asymptomatic liver stage of Plasmodium infection through chemoprevention could become a key intervention to reduce malaria-associated incidence and mortality. Methods M5717, a Plasmodium elongation factor 2 inhibitor, was assessed in vitro and in vivo with readily a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Malaria Journal
Main Authors: Akash Khandelwal, Francisca Arez, Paula M. Alves, Lassina Badolo, Catarina Brito, Christoph Fischli, Diana Fontinha, Claude Oeuvray, Miguel Prudêncio, Matthias Rottmann, Justin Wilkins, Özkan Yalkinoglu, Wilhelmina M. Bagchus, Thomas Spangenberg
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: BMC 2022
Subjects:
3R
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-022-04171-0
https://doaj.org/article/1a184acca8e44dcf9fd53edb5f8e0845
Description
Summary:Abstract Background Targeting the asymptomatic liver stage of Plasmodium infection through chemoprevention could become a key intervention to reduce malaria-associated incidence and mortality. Methods M5717, a Plasmodium elongation factor 2 inhibitor, was assessed in vitro and in vivo with readily accessible Plasmodium berghei parasites. In an animal refinement, reduction, replacement approach, the in vitro IC99 value was used to feed a Population Pharmacokinetics modelling and simulation approach to determine meaningful effective doses for a subsequent Plasmodium sporozoite-induced volunteer infection study. Results Doses of 100 and 200 mg would provide exposures exceeding IC99 in 96 and 100% of the simulated population, respectively. Conclusions This approach has the potential to accelerate the search for new anti-malarials, to reduce the number of healthy volunteers needed in a clinical study and decrease and refine the animal use in the preclinical phase. Graphical Abstract