Molecular docking analysis of selected natural products from Halymenia sp. and Laurencia sp. seaweeds against plasmepsins as antimalarials

Malaria is one of the most important public health problems worldwide, with nearly half of the global population exposed to the risk of contamination. The disease is found in 91 countries, mostly in the tropics and subtropics of the planet. There are several previous research that identifies Plasmepsins as a potential target to develop novel antimalarial drugs from the malaria parasite Plasmodium that play a role in the breakdown of globin into amino acids. Given the above, it is important to find novel and effective drugs that can decrease this disease, especially from natural products such as medicine. Seaweed is a potential source of bioactive compounds to be used as antimalarials, such as species from the genera Laurencia and Halymenia. This recent study has studied the molecular docking approach to identify the potential of Halymenia sp. and Laurencia sp. against Plasmepsin by using PyRx 0.8 software. It showed that the compounds in Halymenia sp. and Laurencia sp. were able to react and inhibit the action of plasmepsin, seen from the binding affinity value, which was quite small at -4.3, this value is higher than the two bioactive compounds in seaweed, namely Stigmasterol and p-hydroxybenzaldehyde which have binding affinity values of -8.5 and 6.5, respectively. Judging from this, the compounds contained in Laurencia sp and Halymenia sp have potential as candidates for antimalarial drugs.