Sueth-Santiago V, Decote-Ricardo D, Morrot A, Freire-de-Lima CG, Lima MEF. Challenges in the chemotherapy of Chagas disease: Looking for possibilities related to the differences and similarities between the parasite and host. World J Biol Chem 2017; 8(1): 57-80 [PMID: 28289519 DOI: 10.4331/wjbc.v8.i1.57]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Dr. Marco Edilson Freire Lima, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Departamento de Química, Rodovia BR 465, Km 7, Seropédica, CEP 23890-000, Brazil. marco@ufrrj.br
Research Domain of This Article
Chemistry, Medicinal
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Biol Chem. Feb 26, 2017; 8(1): 57-80 Published online Feb 26, 2017. doi: 10.4331/wjbc.v8.i1.57
Challenges in the chemotherapy of Chagas disease: Looking for possibilities related to the differences and similarities between the parasite and host
Vitor Sueth-Santiago, Debora Decote-Ricardo, Alexandre Morrot, Celio Geraldo Freire-de-Lima, Marco Edilson Freire Lima
Vitor Sueth-Santiago, Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio de Janeiro, Campus São Gonçalo, Rua José Augusto Pereira dos Santos, São Gonçalo, CEP 24425-004, Brazil
Vitor Sueth-Santiago, Marco Edilson Freire Lima, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Departamento de Química, Seropédica, CEP 23890-000, Brazil
Debora Decote-Ricardo, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Instituto de Veterinária, Departamento de Microbiologia e Imunologia Veterinária, Seropédica, CEP 23890-000, Brazil
Alexandre Morrot, Celio Geraldo Freire-de-Lima, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, CEP 21941-902, Brazil
Author contributions: Sueth-Santiago V and Lima MEF wrote the paper; Decote-Ricardo D, Morrot A and Freire-de-Lima CG perfomed the collected the data.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Marco Edilson Freire Lima, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Departamento de Química, Rodovia BR 465, Km 7, Seropédica, CEP 23890-000, Brazil. marco@ufrrj.br
Telephone: +55-21-25626523 Fax: +55-21-22808193
Received: August 27, 2016 Peer-review started: August 29, 2016 First decision: November 14, 2016 Revised: December 30, 2016 Accepted: January 11, 2017 Article in press: January 14, 2017 Published online: February 26, 2017 Processing time: 182 Days and 12.7 Hours
Abstract
Almost 110 years after the first studies by Dr. Carlos Chagas describing an infectious disease that was named for him, Chagas disease remains a neglected illness and a death sentence for infected people in poor countries. This short review highlights the enormous need for new studies aimed at the development of novel and more specific drugs to treat chagasic patients. The primary tool for facing this challenge is deep knowledge about the similarities and differences between the parasite and its human host.
Core tip: Chagas disease remains the most neglected parasitic illness the world. Here, we note that detailed knowledge of both the differences and similarities between the Trypanosoma cruzi parasite and the human host’s biochemical targets may be the key to developing novel effective drugs to treat patients who are suffering with this severe and debilitating sickness.
