Synonyms: β-artemether | beta-artemether
artemether is an approved drug (FDA (2009) in combination with lumefantrine)
Compound class:
Synthetic organic
Comment: Artemether is a semisynthetic derivative of artemisinin, a natural product isolated from the qinghao or sweet wormwood plant (Artemisia annua). Synthesis yields two crystalline anomers, α- and β-artemether, the latter predominates and is marginally more active [2].
Artemether is a prodrug that is converted to the active metabolite artenimol (dihydroartemisinin). The Malaria tab on this ligand page provides additional curator comments of relevance to the Guide to MALARIA PHARMACOLOGY. Ligand Activity Visualisation ChartsThese are box plot that provide a unique visualisation, summarising all the activity data for a ligand taken from ChEMBL and GtoPdb across multiple targets and species. Click on a plot to see the median, interquartile range, low and high data points. A value of zero indicates that no data are available. A separate chart is created for each target, and where possible the algorithm tries to merge ChEMBL and GtoPdb targets by matching them on name and UniProt accession, for each available species. However, please note that inconsistency in naming of targets may lead to data for the same target being reported across multiple charts. ✖ |
|
No information available. |
Summary of Clinical Use |
Artemether is on the World Health Organization's Model List of Essential Medicines. The 2009 US FDA approval for this compound is in combination with lumefantrine (trade name Coartem®) and is one of the artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) recommended in the World Health Organization's Guidelines for the treatment of malaria [4]. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) granted orphan designation for the combined formulation in 2010 (link to the EMA Orphan Designation record here). The WHO guidelines also recommend intramuscular injection of artemether for the treatment of severe malaria if artesunate is not available [3]. The link to extended ADME data provided below is for the combined formulation with lumefantrine. |
External links |
For extended ADME data see the following: Drugs.com |