Centro de Química, Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, Caracas, Venezuela.
Drug Discov Today. 2010 Dec;15(23-24):1070-8. doi: 10.1016/j.drudis.2010.10.005. Epub 2010 Oct 23.
Tropical diseases today constitute a major health problem and a big challenge for drug discovery. Because of the limited arsenal of effective antiparasitic agents and the frequent appearance of chemoresistance, there is an urgent and continuous need to develop new drugs against these ailments. Metal compounds still offer excellent opportunities to find new 'leads' against the major protozoan diseases such as malaria, leishmaniasis and trypanosomiasis. A few metal-based drugs are already available in this therapeutic area, and others are currently being developed. Recent progress in parasite genomics and the identification of a few biomolecular targets hold great promise for the discovery of new 'mechanism-based' antiparasitic metallodrugs. The trends and perspectives for this exciting research field are outlined here.
热带病如今构成了一个主要的健康问题，也是药物发现的一个巨大挑战。由于有效的抗寄生虫药物储备有限，而且经常出现化疗耐药性，因此迫切需要不断开发针对这些疾病的新药。金属化合物仍然为寻找针对疟疾、利什曼病和锥虫病等主要原生动物病的新“先导化合物”提供了极好的机会。在这一治疗领域已经有一些基于金属的药物，还有一些正在开发中。寄生虫基因组学的最新进展和一些生物分子靶标的鉴定为发现新的“基于机制”的抗寄生虫金属药物带来了巨大的希望。本文概述了这一令人兴奋的研究领域的趋势和展望。
