Malaria remains one of the most important infectious diseases in the world. In 2017 alone, approximately 219 million people were infected with malaria, and 435,000 people died of this disease. Plasmodium falciparum, which causes falciparum malaria, is becoming resistant to artemisinin (ART) in Southeast Asia; therefore, new antimalarial drugs are urgently needed. Some excellent antimalarial drugs, such as quinine and ART, were originally obtained from plants. Hence, we analyzed the antimalarial effects of marine natural products to find new antimalarial agents. We used a malaria growth inhibition assay to determine the antimalarial ability and half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) values of the marine organism–derived compounds. Three compounds (kapakahine A, kapakahine B, and kulolide-1) showed antimalarial effects, and one (kapakahine F) showed selective antimalarial effects on the Dd2 clone. Although the IC₅₀ values obtained for these compounds were greater than that of ART, their potency against P. falciparum is sufficient to warrant further investigation of these compounds as possible drug leads.

疟疾仍然是世界上最重要的传染病之一。仅在2017年，就有约2.19亿人感染了疟疾，并且有43.5万人死于这种疾病。导致恶性疟疾的恶性疟原虫在东南亚变得对青蒿素（ART）产生抗药性。因此，迫切需要新的抗疟药。一些出色的抗疟药，例如奎宁和抗逆转录病毒药物，最初是从植物中获得的。因此，我们分析了海洋天然产物的抗疟作用，以寻找新的抗疟剂。我们使用疟疾生长抑制试验来确定抗疟能力和半数最大抑制浓度（IC ₅₀）海洋生物衍生化合物的价值。三种化合物（kapakahine A，kapakahine B和kulolide-1）显示出抗疟作用，一种化合物（kapakahine F）显示出对Dd2克隆的选择性抗疟作用。尽管这些化合物的IC ₅₀值大于ART的IC ₅₀值，但它们对抗恶性疟原虫的效力足以确保对这些化合物作为可能的药物线索进行进一步研究。