Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Laboratório de Inovação Tecnológica no Desenvolvimento de Fármacos e Cosméticos, Maringá, PR, Brasil.
Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 2022 Mar 30;117:e220396. doi: 10.1590/0074-02760220396. eCollection 2022.
Over the past years, natural products have been explored in order to find biological active substances to treat various diseases. Regarding their potential action against parasites such as trypanosomatids, specially Trypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania spp., much advance has been achieved. Extracts and purified molecules of several species from genera Piper, Tanacetum, Porophyllum, and Copaifera have been widely investigated by our research group and exhibited interesting antitrypanosomal and antileishmanial activities. These natural compounds affected different structures in parasites, and we believe that the mitochondrion is a strategic target to induce parasite death. Considering that these trypanosomatids have a unique mitochondrion, this cellular target has been extensively studied aiming to find more selective drugs, since the current treatment of these neglected tropical diseases has some challenges such as high toxicity and prolonged treatment time. Here, we summarise some results obtained with natural products from our research group and we further highlighted some strategies that must be considered to finally develop an effective chemotherapeutic agent against these parasites.
在过去的几年中，人们一直在探索天然产物，以寻找治疗各种疾病的生物活性物质。关于它们对寄生虫（如克氏锥虫和利什曼原虫等）的潜在作用，我们的研究小组已经取得了很大的进展。我们广泛研究了来自胡椒属、菊科、Porophyllum 属和 Copaifera 属的几种物种的提取物和纯化分子，这些天然化合物对寄生虫的不同结构产生了影响，我们认为线粒体是诱导寄生虫死亡的一个重要靶点。鉴于这些原生动物具有独特的线粒体，因此针对该细胞靶点进行了广泛的研究，旨在寻找更具选择性的药物，因为目前对这些被忽视的热带病的治疗存在一些挑战，如毒性高和治疗时间长。在这里，我们总结了我们研究小组从天然产物中获得的一些结果，并进一步强调了一些必须考虑的策略，以最终开发出针对这些寄生虫的有效化疗药物。
