During its metabolization, one of the main metabolites, the benzoyl derivative, is the active species able of inhibiting the activity of Plasmodium, leading to the death of the parasite. As this new series of para-substituted 3-arylmenadione is structurally close to plasmodione, we also synthesized various benzoyl derivatives of 3-benzoylMD for mode of action studies (Scheme 8).