The Screening of Bacteria with Antimalarial Activity, a Novel Alternative to Drugs

Abstract

Malaria remains one of the important human diseases in the world with 1-2 million
deaths annually. An increasing in drug resistance of malaria parasites particularly, P.
falciparum, to available drugs has led to a novel drug development. Antimalarial drug
development can follow several strategies, ranging from modifications of existing agents to
the design of novel agents that act against new targets. Several compounds isolated from
natural products including plant and microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi will be a rich
source many bioactive substances with diverse structures for optimization to obtain better
therapeutic agents. The objective of this work is to find a new compound from bacterial
origin to combat against drug resistant malaria parasite, P. falciparum. The bacterial extract
prepared from two isolated bacteria with anti-MRSA activity (strain SOPB1 and WARY7-4)
show inhibitory activity toward chloroquine resistant malaria strain K1 as shown by a
decrease up to 50% in the parasite number at every concentration used. Moreover, these two
substances also inhibit the parasite development and reinfection as shown by pyknotic
formation and died parasite at the end of incubation. To our knowledge, this work is the first
report on the antimalarial activity of bacterial extract. These two bacterial extracts are
promising target used for treatment of drug resistance malaria P. falciparum and might be
exploited as a novel drug for mono- or combination therapy for malaria in the future.