Antimalarial Agents Derived from Metal‐Amodiaquine Complexes with Activity in Multiple Stages of the Plasmodium Life Cycle

Abstract

Quinolines are excellent ligands for metal coordination and are deployed as drugs for malaria treatment. There is a growing body of evidence indicating that metal complexes can be conjugated with antimalarial quinolines to be used as chemical tools to overcome the disadvantages of quinolines, improving their bioactive speciation, cellular distribution, and subsequently broadening the spectrum of activity to multiple stages of the complex Plasmodium life cycle. In this study, four novel complexes of ruthenium(II) and gold(I) containing amodiaquine (AQ) were synthesized and a careful chemical characterization revealed the precise coordination site of AQ to the metals. Their speciation in solution was investigated, demonstrating the stability of the quinoline‐metal bond. Ru(II)‐ and Au(I)‐AQ complexes were demonstrated to be potent and efficacious in inhibiting parasite growth in multiple stages of the Plasmodium life cycle assayed in vitro and in vivo. These properties could be attributed to the ability of the metal‐AQ complexes to reproduce the suppression of heme detoxification induced by AQ, while also inhibiting other processes in the parasite life cycle, which can be attributed to the action of the metallic species. These findings indicate that metal coordination is a potential chemical tool for drug design and discovery in malaria.