Reactivity of artemisinin & some of its synthetic analogs

Malaria still remains a serious global health threat. Despite the availability of number of antimalarials the treatment is complicated because of the toxicity, high cost, and diminishing efficacy of these drugs. Presently artemisinin and its derivatives are used for the most effective treatment of malaria in the form of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) as recommended by WHO and UNICEF. There is an urgent requirement of better antimalarial drug(s) with adequate resistance. In silico approach may be a befitting alternative of conventional drug designing which is a very long, complex and expensive process. The book emphasizes on the In silico studies of artemisinin and some of its synthetic analogues with quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) method using Density functional theory (DFT) based reactivity descriptors as well as molecular mechanics (MM) parameters. Investigation on heme-artemisinin complexes is also presented to have an insight on the mode of interaction of artemisinins. This book will be helpful for researchers working in the field of drug designing especially using molecular modeling techniques.