Nasimul Hoda
Assistant Professor in Chemistry
Title: Structure guided lead identification of potent plasmodium falciparum phosphoethanolamine methyltransferase inhibitors
Biography
Biography: Nasimul Hoda
Abstract
Malaria is a leading cause of human deaths affected by parasitic infection in tropical and subtropical reasons. Out of the fourrnplasmodium species responsible for this disease in human Plasmodium falciparum is the most deadly. Due to the widespreadrnresistance of the current antimalarial drugs, intense research efforts are focused on identification of new potent antimalarials.rnWe report here, a structure based drug discovery strategy for design and synthesis of a series of potent and novel triazine basedrnantimalarials. The X-ray structure of Plasmodium falciparum phosphoethanolamine methyltransferase (PfPMT) is used as a target asrnit is unique to the parasite. Trisubstituted triazine and its anlaogs are produced by an inexpensive three to four step synthesis givingrnexcellent yields. Parasite growth inhibition assays further confirmed the activity of the molecules to be in 5 to 0.8 μM range showingrnselectivity towards the parasite over mammalian cells. Molecular dynamics simulations on the PfPMT-inhibitor complex shed lightrnon the inhibition mechanism for further optimization of the lead compounds.