Modelling the time course of antimalarial parasite killing: a tour of animal and human models, translation and challenges

Malaria remains a global public health concern and current treatment options are suboptimal in some clinical settings. For effective chemotherapy, antimalarial drug concentrations must be sufficient to remove completely all of the parasites in the infected host. Optimized dosing therefore requires a detailed understanding of the time course of antimalarial response, whilst simultaneously considering the parasite life cycle and host immune elimination. Recently, the W orld H ealth O rganization ( WHO ) has recommended the development of mathematical models for understanding better antimalarial drug resistance and management. Other international groups have also suggested that mechanistic pharmacokinetic ( PK ) and pharmacodynamic ( PD ) models can support the rationalization of antimalarial dosing strategies. At present, artemisinin‐based combination therapy ( ACT ) is recommended as first line treatment of falciparum malaria for all patient groups. This review summarizes the PK – PD characterization of artemisinin derivatives and other partner drugs from both preclinical studies and human clinical trials. We outline the continuous and discrete time models that have been proposed to describe antimalarial activity on specific stages of the parasite life cycle. The translation of PK – PD predictions from animals to humans is considered, because preclinical studies can provide rich data for detailed mechanism‐based modelling. While similar sampling techniques are limited in clinical studies, PK – PD models can be used to optimize the design of experiments to improve estimation of the parameters of interest. Ultimately, we propose that fully developed mechanistic models can simulate and rationalize ACT or other treatment strategies in antimalarial chemotherapy.