Anticancer Agents Against Malaria: Time to Revisit?

The document explored the potential of repurposing anticancer agents, such as methotrexate (MTX) and trimetrexate (TMX), as antimalarial drugs due to their effectiveness against malaria parasites. Despite toxicity concerns, historical data indicated that low doses of MTX successfully treated malaria in small clinical trials with seven patients. The authors proposed re-evaluating MTX for short-term malaria treatment to address artemisinin resistance. Additionally, TMX and other anticancer drugs like pemetrexate and microtubulin inhibitors showed promise against malaria in vitro. The document highlighted the need for new antimalarials and suggested that repurposing existing drugs could be a cost-effective strategy, recommending further in vivo studies to confirm these findings.