Novel strategies for Plasmodium-targeted drug delivery

Heparin: New Life for an Old Drug

“…Because malaria is a disease prominent in countries with limited resources, new treatments need to consider such economic landscape. In this regard, the use of molecular elements combining several antimalarial activities, whether drug, targeting, carrier, or booster of immune reactions, will contribute to reduce the cost of their development [155].…”

“…Regrettably, the search for this long sought-after magic bullet against malaria has not taken off in earnest yet. However, recent data outline the feasibility of some such potential novel approaches, among which we can count new types of combination therapies where one of the activities does not act on individual Plasmodium gene products [155]. Despite the lack of economic incentives for research in nanomedicine applications to malaria a number of liposome-and polymer-based nanocarriers engineered for the targeted delivery of antimalarial drugs have been developed [122,154,[156][157][158][159][160][161].…”

Extracellular vesicles derived from Plasmodium-infected and non-infected red blood cells as targeted drug delivery vehicles

“…The administration of combinations of two or more drugs having different mechanisms of action and/or different biochemical targets in the parasite is the current recommended treatment to minimize resistance development (Balducci et al, 2016;Biosca et al, 2019;World Health Organization, 2015). However, rather than concentrating all efforts on discovering new drugs whose efficacy is quickly decreased by the parasite's capacity to develop resistance (Aditya et al, 2013;Fernàndez-Busquets, 2016), a crucial strategy is the development of targeted drug delivery systems capable of specifically delivering the antimalarial compound to Plasmodiuminfected RBCs (pRBCs), thus increasing the exposure of the parasite to doses sufficiently high to be lethal and minimizing the risk of drug resistance evolution (Fernàndez-Busquets, 2016;Moles et al, 2015).…”

Interactions of primaquine and chloroquine with PEGylated phosphatidylcholine liposomes

“…However, it lacks efficacy against the asexual form of Plasmodium spp. in blood, indicating that it can not be used as a monotherapy, but should be administered in combination with blood schizonticides 1 – 3 . In addition, the use of PQ is limited by its tendency to cause serious side effects, including hemolysis in individuals deficient in glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase 1 , 2 , 4 – 6 .…”