Brief Description: The present invention relates to novel derivatives of the antimalarial artemisinin,
methods and compositions for their preparation, and their uses in pharmaceutical compositions intended for the treatment of parasitic infections (primarily malaria).
Advantages: Despite their viability of semisynthetic artemisinin as antimalarial agents, an important drawback is its very short half-life in plasma and in the human body(<1-2 hours). As a result of this it has limited metabolic stability and requires high and repeated doses of these compounds are typically required for a single course of treatment, which contributes to the high costs of treatment (particularly problematic in malaria endemic countries).
The novel artemisinin compounds developed at the University of Rochester are designed to be more potent and metabolically stable and would permit lower and less frequent therapeutic dosages, thus providing key advantages compared to currently available artemisinin-based drugs.