The results are in.
Jiri Gut from the Rosenthal group has run 2 of our Ugi products and they both show inhibition of falcipain-2 (EXP165) and Plasmodium falciparum (EXP166) in the micromolar range.
To put this in context the activities are roughly 2 orders of magnitude lower than the positive control used for the enzyme inhibition and chloroquine for the parasite.
But it is a start. And we have officially closed the Open Science Loop for the malaria project, meaning that we have openly documented the docking results from Rajarshi Guha (D-EXP014), our syntheses (EXP148 EXP150) and testing (EXP165 EXP166) in the Rosenthal group.
We can't tell much about the validity of Rajarshi's docking model from the results of two compounds but as more data come in the situation should become clearer.
However, Jiri did make this interesting observation:
The food vacuole abnormality, which is indicative of cysteine protease inhibition was not observed in the parasites, suggesting other mode of action.
