artesunate is an approved drug (FDA (2020), EMA (2021))
Compound class:
Synthetic organic
Comment: Artesunate is a semisynthetic derivative of artemisinin, a natural product isolated from the qinghao or sweet wormwood plant (Artemisia annua). It contains an unusual endoperoxide bridge, believed to be responsible for the antimalarial activity of artemisinin and its derivatives.
Artesunate 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. ✖ |
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No information available. |
Summary of Clinical Use |
Intravenous or intramuscular artesunate is one of the recommended treatments for children and adults with severe malaria [3]. As part of an artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT), artesunate is also a highly effective treatment for uncomplicated malaria caused by all species of the malaria parasite. |
Pharmacokinetics |
Elimination |
The elimination half-life is between 15-45 minutes depending on route of administration [2]. |