Abstract :
[en] With more than 216 million cases and 445.000 deaths reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) in
2016, malaria remains a major concern for public health organizations. 91 countries are affected with more than
800 million people at risk of infection. Unfortunately, resistances to most antimalarial drugs emerge and create a
real worry, leading to an urgent need for new therapeutic candidates [1].
Animals' venoms and secretions constitute a wide reservoir of molecules with many potential therapeutic
activities [2]. In this frame, toad venoms have sparked more and more interest in scientists.
The main purpose of this project aims to isolate compounds from the toad venom and to test whether they
possess a potential antiplasmodial activity. However, the first step, will consist to extract and collect compounds
from crude venoms. To pursue this goal, thin-layer chromatography (TLC) is able to provide a possible isolation
step.
Firstly, various extraction solvents will be tested, to obtain raw venom extracts. Secondly, we proceed to the
separation of the different components contained in the raw extracts by TLC coupled to mass spectrometry. Two
different types of stationary phases are studied: ungrafted silica plates and C18-grafted silica plates, under
multiple mobile phases conditions. Chromatographic resolution of each combination is assessed.
Although TLC offers a range of advantages such as rapid analysis time and low solvent consumption, lack of
reproducibility remains a concern. To solve this problem, we evaluated the sample deposit, the migration and
final drying steps as improvement parameters [3].
References
1) Malaria Report OMS, 2017.
2) Rodriguez, C., et al., Toxins and pharmacologically active compounds from species of the family Bufonidae (Amphibia,
Anura), Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2017 (198), 235 - 254.
3) Ciura, K., et al., Thin layer chromatography in drug discovery process, J. of chromatography A, 2017 (1520), 9 - 22.
