Assessment of the growth inhibitory effect of gellansulfate in rodent malaria in vivo

In our effort to discover novel antimalarials, we previously synthesized gellan sulfate, a novel anticoagulant derivative of gellan gum and showed that it inhibits the growth and invasion of erythrocytes by Plasmodium falciparum parasites in vitro (Recuenco et al. 2014. Sci Rep. 4:4723.). Gellan sulfate was also found to have low cytotoxicity and low anticoagulant activities in vitro. Here, we assessed gellan sulfate for its antimalarial effects in vivo. Despite its effectiveness in vitro, gellan sulfate inhibited the growth of both P. berghei ANKA and P. yoelii 17XL poorly in C57BL/6 and BALB/c mice, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first work that uses gellan gum and gellan sulfate for intraperitoneal injection in mice.