Recombinant Plasmodium falciparum dihydrofolate reductase-based in vitro screen for antifolate antimalarials

We describe the system for screening the effective antifolate antimalarials that uses the recombinant Plasmodium falciparum DHFR domain of the bifunctional DHFR-TS expressed in Escherichia coli, and were designed with amino acid alterations found in the DHFR genes of the antifolate resistant strains. The validity of the screen was verified by the subsequent examination of several substituted pyrrolo[2,3-d]pyrimidines for their antimalarial activity. Among the 120 chemical derivatives, 5 compounds were identified by their preferential inhibition of the drug sensitive pfDHFR to that of the mammalian isoenzyme. As compared to the sensitive enzyme, the decrease in response of the cycloguanil-resistant and pyrimethamine-resistant enzymes to the selected compounds were relatively moderate. This gave folds decrease in sensitivity of 0.8–7.5 and 3.6–29, respectively, while those for cycloguanil and pyrimethamine were 400 and 308. The compounds inhibited the growth of drug-sensitive cultured P. falciparum with 50% effective concentrations of the ranged 0.17–30 nM. As contrasted with the sensitive strain, the fold decrease in sensitivity of the resistant parasites were 0.9–2 and 15–50 in the case of the test compounds, while those for cycloguanil and pyrimethamine were 690 and 20 500. Moreover, the most selective pyrrolo-pyrimidine (P-1) showed in vivo activity against P. berghei in mice.