Malaria: Autophagy as a Potential Therapeutic Target

Abstract

Malaria, where the causative agent Plasmodium is rapidly gaining resistance to practically all the antimalarial drugs in clinical use, requires the identification of new drug targets to enable the discovery of novel, more effective and safer drugs to treat the disease. Advancements in molecular techniques have provided the proof of existence of autophagy in Plasmodium; however, its role(s) in malaria is only becoming to be understood. Nevertheless, some of the recently explored dimensions of autophagy in Plasmodium have indicated its fairly larger role in parasite survival and growth. But then, autophagy is also essential for host cell survival and defence. There is thus need to explore chemotherapeutic strategies to specifically target autophagy in both the parasite and host. This review focuses on autophagy pathways in Plasmodium and in host with a view to identify autophagy-related new drug targets for the discovery of novel antimalarial drugs.