Chawla Bhavna, Madhubala Rentala
School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 110067 India.
J Parasit Dis. 2010 Apr;34(1):1-13. doi: 10.1007/s12639-010-0006-3. Epub 2010 Oct 8.
Leishmaniasis is a major public health problem and till date there are no effective vaccines available. The control strategy relies solely on chemotherapy of the infected people. However, the present repertoire of drugs is limited and increasing resistance towards them has posed a major concern. The first step in drug discovery is to identify a suitable drug target. The genome sequences of Leishmania major and Leishmania infantum has revealed immense amount of information and has given the opportunity to identify novel drug targets that are unique to these parasites. Utilization of this information in order to come up with a candidate drug molecule requires combining all the technology and using a multi-disciplinary approach, right from characterizing the target protein to high throughput screening of compounds. Leishmania belonging to the order kinetoplastidae emerges from the ancient eukaryotic lineages. They are quite diverse from their mammalian hosts and there are several cellular processes that we are getting to know of, which exist distinctly in these parasites. In this review, we discuss some of the metabolic pathways that are essential and could be used as potential drug targets in Leishmania.
利什曼病是一个重大的公共卫生问题，迄今为止尚无有效的疫苗。控制策略完全依赖于对感染者的化疗。然而，目前可用的药物种类有限，对这些药物的耐药性不断增加已成为一个主要问题。药物研发的第一步是确定合适的药物靶点。硕大利什曼原虫和婴儿利什曼原虫的基因组序列揭示了大量信息，并有机会识别这些寄生虫特有的新型药物靶点。为了提出候选药物分子而利用这些信息需要结合所有技术并采用多学科方法，从表征靶蛋白到化合物的高通量筛选。属于动质体目的利什曼原虫起源于古老的真核生物谱系。它们与哺乳动物宿主有很大不同，我们正在了解一些在这些寄生虫中独特存在的细胞过程。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了一些对利什曼原虫至关重要且可作为潜在药物靶点的代谢途径。
