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.