Both plants Sebastiania chamaelea from Niger and Chrozophora senegalensis from Senegal used in African traditional medicine in malaria treatment share a same active principle.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Based on ethnobotanical data obtained from Nigerien and Senegalese traditional healers, two Euphorbiaceae plants, Sebastiania chamaelea and Chrozophora senegalensis, traditionally used to treat malaria, were selected for further investigations.

Materials And Methods: Plant extracts were prepared with different solvents and tested both in vitro on several strains of Plasmodium falciparum, and in vivo to evaluate their antiplasmodial properties and isolate their active principles.

Results: With IC50 values around 6.

Indole and aminoimidazole moieties appear as key structural units in antiplasmodial molecules.

From a library of compounds of natural sources, a big series of molecules was chosen by random sampling to evaluate their in vitro antimalarial activity against Plasmodium falciparum and their antifungal activity against Candida sp. From 184 molecules tested, no molecules were active against Candida sp. (MIC>10μg/ml) whereas 13 clearly showed high antiplasmodial activity in vitro, with an IC(50) less than 1μg/ml against the chloroquine-resistant strain of P.

Homophymines B-E and A1-E1, a family of bioactive cyclodepsipeptides from the sponge Homophymia sp.

Nine new cyclodepsipeptides, homophymines B-E (2-5) and A1-E1 (1a-5a), were isolated from the polar extracts of the sponge Homophymia sp. The new structures, featuring new polyketide-derived end groups, were determined by interpretation of NMR and MS data. The configurations of the new end groups was secured by the application of J-based configurational analysis.

Homophymine A, an anti-HIV cyclodepsipeptide from the sponge Homophymia sp.

A new anti-HIV cyclodepsipeptide, homophymine A, was isolated from a New Caledonian collection of the marine sponge Homophymia sp. The structure of homophymine A was determined by interpretation of spectroscopic data, acid hydrolysis, and LC-MS analysis. Homophymine A contains 11 amino acid residues and an amide-linked 3-hydroxy-2,4,6-trimethyloctanoic acid moiety.

Girolline: a potential lead structure for antiplasmodial drug research.

Girolline is a 2-aminoimidazole derivative extracted from Cymbastela cantharella (a New-Caledonian sponge) that has shown antitumor activity. In this study, we investigated its antimalarial activity and the point of action within the erythrocytic cycle of Plasmodium falciparum. Initially, we tested girolline and some synthetic analogues in vitro against four P.