Recent Developments in Antimalarial Natural Products Isolated from Medicinal Plants

Malaria is an infectious disease causing almost one million deaths each year. There is an urgent need for discovery of new antimalarial compounds. Natural products have been the single most productive source of leads for the development of drugs, because of their great variety of chemical structures. This review covers studies on antimalarial natural products isolated from plants, published from January 2010 until April 2012. A total of 171 structures comprising alkaloids, terpenoids, phenolics and other metabolites are listed in this review, including information on their antiplasmodial and cytotoxic activity. Keywords: Malaria, antimalarial, Plasmodium, antiplasmodial, natural product.