Departamento de Microbiologia, Imunologia e Parasitologia, Escola Paulista de Medicina, UNIFESP, São Paulo, SP, Brazil.
N Biotechnol. 2010 Dec 31;27(6):837-43. doi: 10.1016/j.nbt.2010.02.003. Epub 2010 Feb 19.
Chagas' disease, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi, is an urgent and highly prevalent danger that is endemic to Latin America, and which the research community continues to ignore. Each year, Chagas' disease kills more people in Latin America compared to any other parasite-borne disease, including malaria. In addition, between 15 and 18 million people worldwide are afflicted with this potentially lethal disease. Despite these devastating numbers, less than 0.5% of worldwide research and development for neglected diseases was aimed at Chagas' disease. The aim of this review is to draw the attention of biotechnologists to the intriguing parasite that causes Chagas' disease, which is T. cruzi. Additionally, we would also like to convince the community that basic science research can have a profound impact on the diagnosis and treatment of Chagas' disease. In this review, we introduce distinct features of T. cruzi such as its complex life cycle (e.g. the potentially infective extracellular amastigote form), its genome and genomics, as well as proteomic analysis of this parasite. Notably, the PIK pathway has been widely acknowledged as an excellent target for drug discovery to combat this pathogen. Furthermore we also describe how the identification and characterization of PIK genes can aid in neutralizing Trypanosoma infections.
恰加斯病由克氏锥虫引起，是拉丁美洲流行的一种严重且高发的疾病，但研究界一直忽视了它。每年，拉丁美洲死于恰加斯病的人数比任何其他寄生虫病都多，包括疟疾。此外，全世界有 1500 万至 1800 万人患有这种潜在致命疾病。尽管这些数字令人痛心，但全球用于治疗被忽视疾病的研发资金中，只有不到 0.5%用于治疗恰加斯病。本文旨在引起生物技术学家对引起恰加斯病的克氏锥虫这种有趣寄生虫的关注。此外，我们还想让科学界相信，基础科学研究可以对恰加斯病的诊断和治疗产生深远的影响。在本文中，我们介绍了克氏锥虫的一些独特特征，如其复杂的生命周期（例如潜在感染性的细胞外无鞭毛体形式）、基因组和基因组学，以及对这种寄生虫的蛋白质组学分析。值得注意的是，PIK 通路已被广泛认为是发现药物以对抗这种病原体的理想靶点。此外，我们还描述了如何通过鉴定和表征 PIK 基因来帮助中和锥虫感染。
