The good the bad and the ugly: Current Preclinical Nanomedical Strategies Against Dengue and Chagas disease

ROMERO, MORILLA

Conferencia; CLINAM 2014; 2014

The Chagas disease or American trypanosomiasis and the mosquito-borne Dengue fever affect 10 and nearly 400 million people worldwide respectively. Both infections are caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi and by a single positive-stranded RNA flavivirus. Currently, the only accepted drug against Chagas disease is the 2 nitroimidazole benznidazole-an extremely toxic and incapable of eradicating the intracellular amastigotes,   responsible for the chronic cardiac cardiomyopathy and potential sudden death- antichagasic agent. There is no specific antiviral medication against Dengue and both diseases lack of preventive vaccines. In this presentation we offer an overview on the recent nanomedical approaches for the treatment and prophylaxis of these tropical neglected diseases. We will focus on the preclinical developments of tetravalent vaccination for Dengue as well as the recent strategies for antichagasic nano-drug delivery.