A Review on Natural Sources of Antimalarials: Fungi and Plants

Recent progress in drug discovery in past decades reduced the high level of pain experienced due to infectious diseases by humans. A significant impact has been made on developing novel antimicrobial agents but is failing regularly due to development of resistance to drugs by the parasite or microbe. A continuing need of antimicrobials is there to protect humans from resistant microbes from different sources such as semisynthetic sources, synthetic and natural sources. Research in developing natural antimicrobials such as plant and fungal sources is still in its initial stages. In this review, we have concentrated on devastating disease malaria which is seen in several parts of world. Even though there are newly developed antimalarial artemisinin based combination therapy, recent reports are suggesting that resistance may also develop soon against the newer artemesinin products. Our search for literature and survey for natural antimicrobials motivated us to give concern to fungal source as promising antimalarial and most unexplored source for the same. This review throws light on recent reports on disease malaria, causative species and outline of its lifecycle, targets of drug action and mainly the fungal sources of antimalarial.