Strategy and Problems for Synthesis of Antimalaria Artemisinin (Qinghaosu)

Abstract Presence of multi‐stereo centre in the antimalaria artemisinin molecules makes difficult to chemist for diastereoselective synthesis. This diastereoselectivity is the main hurdle for low yield of product in the reported synthesis. Though, artemisinin‐based drugs are in the frontline treatment of malaria and effective medicine that kills malarial parasites. Due to insufficient production of artemisinin (qinghaosu), millions of people lost their lives in past years worldwide. The current review will summarize the strategy developed so far for synthesis of antimalaria artemisinin and problems encountered during the synthesis. The combined insight of different methods may allow finer approaches capable of delivering efficient synthetic approaches for developing artemisinin and their hybrid analogues for further drug discovery.