ABSTRACT
The World Health Organization is pressing for artemisinin to be used only in combination with another drug. These and some other derivatives have better medicinal properties than artemisinin. Although artemisinin itself has drawbacks as a medication, it is readily reduced by NaBH4 to dihydroartemisinin, which in turn is readily converted into useful derivatives such as artemether and artesunate. Artemisinin is largely obtained from sweet wormwood, which contains less than 1% artemisinin. Making artemisinin from scratch requires many steps, and is also expensive. Increasingly, people are worrying about the possibility of the malaria parasite becoming resistant to artemisinin. In 2013, a new class of antimalarial drugs based on a quinolone-3-diarylether structure was developed at the Oregon Health & Science University, which attacks the malaria parasite at different stages of its life cycle. This approach may make it much harder for the parasite to develop resistance to these new molecules.
