In silico chemogenomics repositioning strategy identifies a novel candidate for malaria treatment

Malaria remains a public health issue, with about 219 million cases and 500.000 deaths annually. Evolution of parasite strains resistant to all known classes of antimalarial drugs1 urges the need for novel compounds, especially against vivax malaria. Considering the longstanding and costly drug development process, in silico-based approaches allow predicting efficacy of molecules, narrowing down the panel of drugs to be tested. Drug repositioning is a strategy that resorts to approved and marketed drugs to reduce time and decrease R&D costs. Thus, we carried out a comparative phylogenomics approach in order to identify predicted P. falciparum and P. vivax targets that are present in the parasite’s proteome but absent in humans. Among a list of these parasite proteins and their homologue approved drug targets, we identified a molecule with repurposing potential, the anthracycline Epirubicin. Experimental validation confirmed Epirubicin as a potent antimalarial candidate throughout the parasite life cycle.