Antiparasitic drug discovery from plant sources

SÜLSEN V

MEDICINA (BUENOS AIRES)

MEDICINA (BUENOS AIRES)

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2019 vol. 79 p. 38 - 39

0025-7680

Despite the advances and development of synthetic chemistry, drugs derived from natural sources continue to be outstanding. The chemical diversity of natural compounds determines a greater possibility of finding new molecules with unique structures and with potential biological activities. Among them, plant sources have been of great interest and compounds isolated from them have been used to treat a large number of diseases. The cardiotonic agent digoxin, morphine and codeine, the antihypertensive drug reserpine, ephedrine, vinblastine and vincristine are examples of therapeutic agents obtained from plant sources. Among antiparasitic drugs, quinine and artemisinin, can be mentioned. These drugs, currently in use for malaria treatment, have been used as scaffolds for the synthesis of more effective and selective compounds. Plant kingdom comprises about 250,000 species, of which only about 6% have been studied for their biological activities, and approximately only 15% have been studied phytochemically (1). Neglected diseases are a group of parasitic, viral or bacterial diseases that mainly affect populations of tropical and subtropical areas of the world that live in a situation of poverty and/or marginality. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 1 billion people suffer from one or more of these diseases and live in areas at high risk of contracting them (2).Our research group is dedicated to the investigation of Asteraceae species in the search of compounds that can be used as a basis for the development of new antiparasitic drugs mainly for the treatment of Chagas disease and Leishmaniasis, both of them considered neglected diseases. Most of the promising bioactive molecules found belong to terpenoids, being specifically sesquiterpene lactones isolated from genus Ambrosia, Mikania and Stevia. The presentation will provide the most important results of our research involving antiparasitic sesquiterpene lactones. 1-Katiyar C, Gupta A, Kanjilal S, Katiyar S. Drug discovery from plant sources: An integrated approach. Ayu. 2012;33(1):10?19. doi:10.4103/0974-8520.100295.2-World Health Organization, 2019. Neglected tropical diseases. https://www.who.int/neglected_diseases/diseases/en/