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Audio Interview

Kalihinol analog MED6-189: a promising pan-antimalarial candidate

Published on May 28, 2026   13 min

A selection of talks on Microbiology

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Interviewer: The research group of Prof. Karine Le Roch at the University of California, Riverside, recently published a paper in Science Journal detailing the synthesis of an analog of kalihinol, a sponge-derived natural product, which demonstrates activity against drug-resistant malaria. Prof. Roch has kindly joined us today to discuss her findings. Prof. Roch, thank you very much for joining us today. Prof. Roch: Thank you for having me. Interviewer: Could you provide some background on the approach that you took in this research and what led you to focus on kalihinol analogues? Prof. Roch: So, I've been working on natural product from drug discovery against malaria for decades. Over the years, my work focused on understanding not only how the parasite can survive inside a human red blood cell, but also how we can identify new drugs and drug targets. So we all know that successful malaria chemotherapy still have a strong historical link to natural products of which quinine and artemisinin are the two most important antimalarial drugs extracted from plants. So why these natural products are so successful drugs? They offer a vast source of chemically diverse compound with potential therapeutic properties, they often exhibit a unique molecular structure that can lead to novel drug candidates with fewer side effects compared to purely synthetic molecules, and they are often very relevant for tackling complex disease and fight mechanisms of drug resistance. So as I said earlier, malaria has a very strong historical link to natural products, and I've been interested in trying to discover new products that could actually be efficient against malaria parasites.

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Kalihinol analog MED6-189: a promising pan-antimalarial candidate

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