The discovery of artemisinin from Chinese medicinal plant, Artemisia annua in 1971, opened a new era in the malarial chemotherapy. This discovery was the beginning of exploring peroxides as potential replacements for the traditional antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine and mefloquine. The structurally simple class of peroxides that emerged from these studies was the 1,2,4,5-tetraoxanes. This study describes the current status of tetraoxane-based antimalarials that show significant promises because of their artemisinin-like activity. Literature from 1999 has been critically reviewed and an attempt has been made to discuss various synthetic methods and structure–activity relationship study among the series of tetraoxane-based compounds.

中文翻译：

---

四恶烷：合成和药物化学的观点。

1971年从中草药青蒿（Artemisia annua）中发现青蒿素，开启了疟疾化学疗法的新纪元。这一发现是探索过氧化物作为传统抗疟药（例如氯喹和甲氟喹）的潜在替代品的开始。从这些研究中得出的结构简单的过氧化物是1,2,4,5-四恶烷。这项研究描述了基于四恶烷的抗疟药的现状，这些抗疟药由于具有类似青蒿素的活性而显示出重要的前景。对1999年以来的文献进行了严格的审查，并试图讨论各种合成方法以及一系列基于四恶烷的化合物之间的构效关系研究。