VNI Cures Acute and Chronic Experimental Chagas Disease

Overview

Journal J Infect Dis

Publisher Oxford University Press

Specialty Infectious Diseases

Date 2013 Feb 2

PMID 23372180

Citations 62

Authors

Fernando Villalta

Mark C Dobish

Pius N Nde

Yulia Y Kleshchenko

Tatiana Y Hargrove

Candice A Johnson

Michael R Waterman

Jeffrey N Johnston

Galina I Lepesheva

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Chagas disease is a deadly infection caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. Afflicting approximately 8 million people in Latin America, Chagas disease is now becoming a serious global health problem proliferating beyond the traditional geographical borders, mainly because of human and vector migration. Because the disease is endemic in low-resource areas, industrial drug development has been lethargic. The chronic form remains incurable, there are no vaccines, and 2 existing drugs for the acute form are toxic and have low efficacy. Here we report the efficacy of a small molecule, VNI, including evidence of its effectiveness against chronic Chagas disease. VNI is a potent experimental inhibitor of T. cruzi sterol 14α-demethylase. Nontoxic and highly selective, VNI displays promising pharmacokinetics and administered orally to mice at 25 mg/kg for 30 days cures, with 100% cure rate and 100% survival, the acute and chronic T. cruzi infection.

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