Chalcone hybrids as privileged scaffolds in antimalarial drug discovery: A key review

Malaria remains a serious worldwide health danger and massive economic trouble to disease-endemic nations. Presently, 250 million of malarial cases are expected worldwide. The emergence of fighting of the Plasmodium parasite against the first-line antimalarial drugs has fueled research attention in the way of designing new scaffolds as well as strategies to counter the drug resistance. Chalcones are simple and well-known analogs, which were found in a huge number of natural compounds and also been prepared according to their suitable synthetic approaches. This review illustrates the current progresses on structure-activity relationship (SAR) and mechanism of diverse types of chalcone derivatives that play a significant role for the development of novel safe, less toxic and highly active antimalarials. This present mini-review will be useful to scientists in research fields of medicinal chemistry, organic synthesis, and also various biological applications particularly for the development of novel antiplasmodial and antimalarial agents. (c) 2020 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.