ICI 56,780 (5) displayed causal prophylactic and blood schizonticidal activity (ED50=0.05 mg/kg) in rodent malaria models but produced rapid acquisition of parasitological resistance in P. berghei infected mice. Herein we describe the synthesis of analogues of 5 with EC50 as low as 0.15 nM against multidrug resistant P. falciparum. Optimal activity with low cross-resistance indexes (RI) to atovaquone was achieved by introducing ortho-substituted aryl moieties at the 3-position of the 7-(2-phenoxyethoxy)-4(1H)-quinolone core.

Herein, we describe a practical, one-pot variant of the sulfo-click reaction, in which 9-fluorenylmethyl-protected thioesters are rapidly deprotected and reacted further with sulfonylazides to give N-acyl sulfonamides.

A clean arylation protocol of ethyl acetoacetate was developed using hypervalent diaryliodonium salts under mild and metal-free conditions. The scope of the reaction, using symmetric and unsymmetric iodonium salts with varying sterics and electronics was examined. Further, this method has been applied for the synthesis of antimalarial compound ELQ-300, which is currently in preclinical development.

Primaquine (PQ) is the only commercially available drug that clears dormant liver stages of malaria and blocks transmission to mosquito vectors. Although an old drug, much remains to be known about the mechanism(s) of action. Herein we develop a fluorescent tagged PQ to discover cellular localization in the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. Successful synthesis and characterization of a primaquine-coumarin fluorescent probe (PQCP) demonstrated potency equivalent to the parent drug and the probe was not cytotoxic to HepG2 carcinoma cells. Cellular localization was found primarily in the cytosol of the asexual erythrocytic and gametocyte stages of parasite development.

Kinetic target-guided synthesis (KTGS) is a powerful screening approach that enables identification of small molecule modulators for biomolecules. While many KTGS variants have emerged, a majority of the examples suffer from limited throughput and a poor signal/noise ratio, hampering reliable hit detection. Herein, we present our optimized multifragment KTGS screening strategy that tackles these limitations. This approach utilizes selected reaction monitoring liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry for hit detection, enabling the incubation of 190 fragment combinations per screening well. Consequentially, our fragment library was expanded from 81 possible combinations to 1710, representing the largest KTGS screening library assembled to date. The expanded library was screened against Mcl-1, leading to the discovery of 24 inhibitors. This work unveils the true potential of KTGS with respect to the rapid and reliable identification of hits, further highlighting its utility as a complement to the existing repertoire of screening methods used in drug discovery.

Antimalarial compounds ELQ‐300 and P4Q‐391 are highly potent against the blood and the liver stages of the Plasmodium parasite and also possess potent transmission‐blocking activity. Gram amounts of these two compounds were required for extensive assessment of in vivo efficacy, pharmacokinetics, and safety. Several deficiencies existed in the original synthetic routes of ELQ‐300 and P4Q‐391 including reliance on toxic heavy‐metal reagents, harsh reaction conditions, and several low‐yielding steps. Herein, we report the development of two alternative syntheses, which are reliable, high yielding, scalable, and have the potential to become a route of choice at process scale.

Treatment of title ester (II) with a series of symmetrical diaryliodonium salts is successful to form the required arylation products.

A one‐pot variant of the sulfo‐click reaction in presented, in which protected thioesters (I) and (IV) are rapidly deprotected and further subjected to the reaction with sulfonylazides (II) and (V) to afford N‐acyl sulfonamides (III) and (VI), respectively.