Emerging Agents for the treatment of Chagas disease: what is in the preclinical and clinical development pipeline?
ntroduction: Chagas disease treatment relies on the lengthy administration of benznidazole and/or nifurtimox, which have frequent toxicity associated. The disease, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, is mostly diagnosed at its chronic phase when life-threatening symptomatology manifest in appr...
| Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | article |
| Status: | Versión aceptada para publicación |
| Publication Date: | 2020 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya) |
| Repository: | Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:recercat.cat:2445/211921 |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/2445/211921 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Malaltia de Chagas Malalties parasitàries Chagas' disease Parasitic diseases |
| Summary: | ntroduction: Chagas disease treatment relies on the lengthy administration of benznidazole and/or nifurtimox, which have frequent toxicity associated. The disease, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, is mostly diagnosed at its chronic phase when life-threatening symptomatology manifest in approximately 30% of those infected. Considering that both available drugs have variable efficacy by then, and there are over 6 million people infected, there is a pressing need to find safer, more efficacious drugs. Areas covered: We provide an updated view of the path to achieve the aforementioned goal. From state-of-the-art in vitro and in vivo assays based on genetically engineered parasites that have allowed high throughput screenings of large chemical collections, to the unfulfilled requirement of having treatment-response biomarkers for the clinical evaluation of drugs. In between, we describe the most promising pre-clinical hits and the landscape of clinical trials with new drugs or new regimens of existing ones. Moreover, the use of monkey models to reduce the pre-clinical to clinical attrition rate is discussed. Expert opinion: In addition to the necessary research on new drugs and much awaited biomarkers of treatment efficacy, a key step will be to generalize access to diagnosis and treatment and maximize efforts to impede transmission. |
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