Apicoplast Biosynthetic Pathways as Possible Targetsfor Combination Therapy of Malaria

The emergence of malaria parasite strains resistant to practically all the antimalarial drugs in clinical use is now making itnecessary to discover and develop both new antimalarial drugs and treatments. Recent advances in molecular techniques along withthe availability of genome sequence ofPlasmodiumfalciparum may provide a wide range of novel targets in metabolic pathways likeisoprenoid biosynthesis, fatty acid biosynthesis and heme biosynthesis in the apicoplast of Plasmodiurn. On the other hand, thecombination therapy approach （currently used to retard the selection of parasite strains resistant to individual components of acombination of drugs） has proved to be a success in the combination of sulphadoxine and pyrimethamine, which targets two differentsteps in the folate pathway of malaria parasite. However, after the success of this therapeutic combination, the efficacy of othercombinations of drugs which target different enzymes in a particular metabolic pathway has, apparently, not been reported. Therefore,herein, we review various drug targets so far discovered in apicoplast-related anabolic pathways, especially, with a sharper focus onthe possibility to target more than one enzyme at a time in a particular metabolic pathway of malaria parasites.