Abstract: Malaria remains a major global public health concern, and nearly half of the global populations are still at risk of malaria infection. However, continuous emergence and spread of drug⁃resistant malaria parasite strains lead to ineffectiveness of conventional antimalarials. Therefore, development of novel antimalarial agents is of urgent need for malaria elimination. As an important component of the host natural immune defense system, antibacterial peptides provide the first line of defense against pathogenic invasion, and the mechanism of preferentially attacking the cell membrane makes them difficult to develop drug resistance. Antimicrobial peptides are therefore considered as a promising candidate for novel antimalarial agents. This review summarizes the advances in researches on antimicrobial peptides with antimalarial actions and discusses the potential of antimalarial peptides as novel antimalarials.

Key words: Malaria, Plasmodium, Antimicrobial peptide, Antimalarial agent

摘要： 疟疾依然是全球重要的公共卫生问题之一，全球仍有近一半人口面临感染风险。目前，耐药性虫株的不断出现和扩散使得传统抗疟药逐渐失效。因此，研发新的抗疟药物迫在眉睫。抗菌肽是机体天然免疫防御系统的重要组成部分，为抵御致病性入侵提供了第一道防线，其优先攻击细胞膜的作用机制使其不易产生耐药性，因此被认为是新型抗疟药物的优质候选资源之一。本文对具有抗疟活性的抗菌肽——抗疟多肽研究进展进行综述，并对其作为新型抗疟药物的研究前景进行展望。

关键词: 疟疾, 疟原虫, 抗菌肽, 抗疟药