Antibacterial and Antimalarial Therapeutic Agents: A Patent Perspective

Background: Antibacterial and antimalarial drugs play a critical role in combating infectious diseases. It is a continuous work to develop new types of antibacterial and antimalarial drugs. Objective: To better understand current landscape and association of antibacterial and antimalarial agents, the European patent analysis was performed. Methods: Antibacterial and antimalarial agents were analyzed by patent analysis. Patent documents from January 2003 to May 2022 were retrieved and analyzed. Results: The present study indicated there were virtually three therapeutic approaches for antibacterial agents, including chemical drugs, biological products and siRNA technology. Chemical drugs were a mainstream therapeutic approach for development of both antibacterial and antimalarial agents. However, the present study found that in contrast to antimalarials, siRNA technology had been initially explored as therapeutic strategy for antibacterial agents. Also, our study is the first to show that there is a low correlation between antibacterial and antimalarial agents. Conclusion: Globally, our study is the first one to show that it may be not a fast approach to discover antimalarial drugs from antibacterial agents based on drug repurposing. siRNA technology as therapeutic strategy had been explored and used in antibacterial field.