Contribution of Meliaceous plants in furnishing lead compounds for antiplasmodial and insecticidal drug development.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Malaria remains one of the greatest threats to human life especially in the tropical and sub-tropical regions where it claims hundreds of thousands of lives of young children every year. Meliaceae represent a large family of trees and shrubs, which are widely used in African traditional medicine for the treatment of several ailments including fever due to malaria. The in vitro and in vivo antiplasmodial as well as insecticidal investigations of their extracts or isolated compounds have led to promising results but to the best of our knowledge, no specific review on the traditional uses, phytochemistry of the antiplasmodial, insecticidal and cytotoxic lead compounds and extracts of Meliaceae plants has been compiled.