Benzoxaborole-based antimalarial drug discovery

New drugs to treat malaria, ideally with unique chemical structures and mechanisms of action, are urgently needed. Optimal antimalarials will be orally bioavailable, have extended pharmacological exposure, be safe for administration to children and pregnant women, be rapidly active against erythrocytic malaria parasites, and ideally also be active against other life cycle stages of malaria parasites. This application builds on a recent collaboration between Anacor and UCSF that established benzoxaboroles as promising new antimalarial agents. Recently, a new collaboration has developed including the original team at UCSF and former Anacor collaborators now at Boragen. The hypothesis is that the proposed novel benzoxaboroles will exert potent antimalarial activity and fulfill necessary criteria to enable progression to antimalarial drug development. This Phase I SBIR application concerns the study of new classes of benzoxaboroles to establish scaffolds for detailed discovery and development in a Phase II program. It is anticipated that the studies will lead to the identification of multiple compounds with promising in vitro activity and favorable drug-like properties, laying the groundwork for advancement to additional in vitro and in vivo studies, and then to more substantial characterization of leads in Phase II of the SBIR program.

Project details

Drug-based Strategies

Jul 2020 — Jun 2023

$600,139

United States