A potent series targeting the malarial cGMP-dependent protein kinase clears infection and blocks transmission.

David A Baker ORCID logo; Lindsay B Stewart; Jonathan M Large; Paul W Bowyer; Keith H Ansell; María B Jiménez-Díaz; Majida El Bakkouri; Kristian Birchall; Koen J Dechering; Nathalie S Bouloc; +19 more... Peter J Coombs; David Whalley; Denise J Harding; Ela Smiljanic-Hurley; Mary C Wheldon; Eloise M Walker; Johannes T Dessens ORCID logo; María José Lafuente; Laura M Sanz; Francisco-Javier Gamo; Santiago B Ferrer; Raymond Hui; Teun Bousema; Iñigo Angulo-Barturén; Andy T Merritt; Simon L Croft ORCID logo; Winston E Gutteridge; Catherine A Kettleborough; Simon A Osborne; (2017) A potent series targeting the malarial cGMP-dependent protein kinase clears infection and blocks transmission. Nature communications, 8 (1). 430-. ISSN 2041-1723 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00572-x
Copy

To combat drug resistance, new chemical entities are urgently required for use in next generation anti-malarial combinations. We report here the results of a medicinal chemistry programme focused on an imidazopyridine series targeting the Plasmodium falciparum cyclic GMP-dependent protein kinase (PfPKG). The most potent compound (ML10) has an IC50 of 160 pM in a PfPKG kinase assay and inhibits P. falciparum blood stage proliferation in vitro with an EC50 of 2.1 nM. Oral dosing renders blood stage parasitaemia undetectable in vivo using a P. falciparum SCID mouse model. The series targets both merozoite egress and erythrocyte invasion, but crucially, also blocks transmission of mature P. falciparum gametocytes to Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes. A co-crystal structure of PvPKG bound to ML10, reveals intimate molecular contacts that explain the high levels of potency and selectivity we have measured. The properties of this series warrant consideration for further development to produce an antimalarial drug.Protein kinases are promising drug targets for treatment of malaria. Here, starting with a medicinal chemistry approach, Baker et al. generate an imidazopyridine that selectively targets Plasmodium falciparum PKG, inhibits blood stage parasite growth in vitro and in mice and blocks transmission to mosquitoes.


picture_as_pdf
s41467-017-00572-x.pdf
subject
Published Version
Available under Creative Commons: NC-ND 3.0

View Download
picture_as_pdf

Accepted Version


Atom BibTeX OpenURL ContextObject in Span Multiline CSV OpenURL ContextObject Dublin Core Dublin Core MPEG-21 DIDL EndNote HTML Citation JSON MARC (ASCII) MARC (ISO 2709) METS MODS RDF+N3 RDF+N-Triples RDF+XML RIOXX2 XML Reference Manager Refer Simple Metadata ASCII Citation EP3 XML
Export

Downloads