Speaker
Description
Antimalarial drug resistance poses a significant threat to global malaria control, underscoring the urgent need for new therapeutic agents. Medicinal plants have historically yielded effective antimalarial remedies. Salacia debilis, traditionally used in African ethnomedicine to treat malaria and malaria-like illnesses, remains largely underexplored. This study investigated the antimalarial potential of previously uncharacterized compounds from the stem bark of S. debilis. The stem bark was collected, ethanol-extracted, and fractionated by column chromatography. Crude extracts were subjected to phytochemical screening, while isolated compounds were characterized using infrared (IR) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Prior phytochemical screening revealed the presence of tannins, saponins, alkaloids, flavonoids, triterpenoids, and phytosterols. Two major compounds were isolated: friedelan-3-one, a known pentacyclic triterpene, and a novel compound exhibiting a carboxylic acid group (IR stretch ~1703 cm⁻¹; ¹³C NMR ~179.1 ppm), aromatic moieties (¹³C NMR 120–150 ppm), sp³ carbons bonded to electronegative atoms (¹³C NMR 50.0–73.0 ppm), and aliphatic chains (¹³C NMR 12.0–42.0 ppm). In silico docking studies revealed that friedelan-3-one exhibits strong binding affinity to Plasmodium falciparum lactate dehydrogenase (pfLDH), a key metabolic enzyme essential to the parasite’s life cycle. Structural elucidation of the unknown compound, along with in vitro and in silico evaluation of antimalarial activity, is ongoing. The identification of friedelan-3-one and a structurally distinct novel compound highlights S. debilis as a promising source of bioactive molecules for antimalarial drug development. The findings of this work contributes to biomedical advances in therapeutic development and help the integration of traditional medicine into modern pharmaceutical science for improved global health outcomes.