Whole-cell in vitro screening for gametocytocidal compounds

The discovery of new chemical starting points with the ability to inhibit Plasmodium falciparum sexual stages, and therefore block the disease transmission, is urgently required. These will form the basis for the development of new therapeutic combinations for the treatment and elimination of malaria and the ultimate goal of global eradication. Recent screening of large chemical libraries against the parasite asexual stages has resulted in the public availability of focused subsets of known antimalarial actives, which represent an excellent starting point for the identification of new gametocytocidal compounds. New stage-specific methodologies aimed at increasing the throughput for assessing compound activity against in vitro cultured gametocytes have recently been published. This article discusses the challenges of assay-oriented large-scale gametocyte culturing and reviews the state-of-the art in gametocytocidal assay development and outcomes.