A novel Leishmania major amastigote assay in 96-well format for rapid drug screening and its use for discovery and evaluation of a new class of leishmanicidal quinolinium salts.

In most laboratories, the screening for leishmanicidal compounds is carried out with Leishmania promastigotes or axenic amastigotes. However, the best approach to identify leishmanicidal compounds is the use of amastigotes residing in macrophages. Reporter gene-based assays are relatively new tools in the search for drugs against eucaryotic protozoa, permitting the development of faster, more automated assays.

QSAR guided synthesis of simplified antiplasmodial analogs of naphthylisoquinoline alkaloids.

Naphthylisoquinoline alkaloids have attracted considerable interest because of their intriguing structure, their unique biosynthetic origin, and their biological activities against several pathogens causing tropical diseases. Their promising pharmacologic properties make them suitable lead structures for new agents, in particular against malaria. Since these natural products are not easy to isolate in sufficient quantities or to synthesize stereoselectively, quantitative structure-activity relationship studies were accomplished to find new antiplasmodial analogs that are structurally related to the naturally occurring naphthylisoquinoline alkaloids, but more easily accessible, more active against Plasmodium falciparum, and, last but not least, less toxic.

Very-long-chain aldehydes promote in vitro prepenetration processes of Blumeria graminis in a dose- and chain length-dependent manner.

Surface properties of aerial plant organs have been shown to affect the interaction of fungal plant pathogens and their hosts. Conidial germination and differentiation - the so-called prepenetration processes - of the barley powdery mildew fungus (Blumeria graminis f. sp.