- Kumar, Amrendra;
- Li, Yuexin;
- Dodean, Rozalia;
- Roth, Alison;
- Caridha, Diana;
- Madejczyk, Michael;
- Jin, Xiannu;
- Dennis, William;
- Lee, Patricia;
- Pybus, Brandon;
- Martin, Monica;
- Pannone, Kristina;
- Dinh, Hieu;
- Blount, Cameron;
- Chetree, Ravi;
- DeLuca, Jesse;
- Evans, Martin;
- Nadeau, Robert;
- Vuong, Chau;
- Leed, Susan;
- Black, Chad;
- Sousa, Jason;
- Nolan, Christina;
- Ceja, Frida;
- Rasmussen, Stephanie;
- Tumwebaze, Patrick;
- Rosenthal, Philip;
- Cooper, Roland;
- Rottmann, Matthias;
- Orjuela-Sanchez, Pamela;
- Meister, Stephan;
- Winzeler, Elizabeth;
- Delves, Michael;
- Matthews, Holly;
- Baum, Jake;
- Kirby, Robert;
- Burrows, Jeremy;
- Duffy, James;
- Peyton, David;
- Reynolds, Kevin;
- Kelly, Jane;
- Kancharla, Papireddy
Well-tolerated and novel antimalarials that can combat multiple stages of the parasite life cycle are desirable but challenging to discover and develop. Herein, we report results for natural product-inspired novel tambjamine antimalarials. We show that they are potent against liver, asexual erythrocytic, and sexual erythrocytic parasite life cycle stages. Notably, our lead candidate 1 (KAR425) displays excellent oral efficacy with complete clearance of parasites within 72 h of treatment in the humanized Plasmodium falciparum (NOD-scid) mouse model at 50 mg/kg × 4 days. Profiling of compound 1 demonstrated a fast in vitro killing profile. In addition, several other tambjamine analogues cured erythrocytic Plasmodium yoelii infections after oral doses of 30 and 50 mg/kg × 4 days in a murine model while exhibiting good safety and metabolic profiles. This study presents the first account of multiple-stage antiplasmodial activities with rapid killing profile in the tambjamine family.