Open AccessVNI Cures Acute and Chronic Experimental Chagas Disease
Author(s) -
Fernando Villalta,
Mark C. Dobish,
Pius N. Nde,
Yulia Y. Kleshchenko,
Tatiana Y. Hargrove,
Candice Johnson,
Michael R. Waterman,
Jeffrey N. Johnston,
Galina I. Lepesheva
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
the journal of infectious diseases
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.69
H-Index - 252
eISSN - 1537-6613
pISSN - 0022-1899
DOI - 10.1093/infdis/jit042
Subject(s) - chagas disease , trypanosoma cruzi , disease , medicine , drug , drug development , immunology , pharmacology , virology , parasite hosting , world wide web , computer science
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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