WC-9 a Lead Drug with Great Prospects for American Trypanosomiasis and Toxoplasmosis

Trypanosomatids possess an unremitting requirement for distinctive endogenous sterols for their life cycle and cannot use the copious availability of cholesterol existing in their mammalian hosts. Exhaustion of endogenous sterols such as ergosterol or of its next biosynthetic product 24-ethylcholesta-5,7,22-trien- 3β-ol brings forth an inhibition of proliferation on Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiologic agent of American trypanosomiasis or Chagas disease. These metabolites are crucial; consequently, the enzymes implicated in catalyzing their formation constitute interesting molecular targets for drug design. Selective inhibition of an enzyme associated to the ergosterol biosynthesis will produce T. cruzi cell arrest. Trypanosomatids, fungi, and yeasts have need of these endogenous sterols for cell viability and growth. In fact, some effective ergosterol biosynthesis inhibitors bearing suitable pharmacokinetic properties in mammals have become putative antiparasitic agents by inducing almost complete parasitological cure in both acute and chronic experimental Chagas disease. WC-9 (compound 7; 4-phenoxyphenoxyethyl thiocyanate) holds our attention bearing in mind that this compound exhibits ED₅₀ values at the low nanomolar range against the clinically more relevant replicative form of T. cruzi (amastigotes). The cellular activity of WC-9 is due to an exhaustion of endogenous sterols demonstrating a blockade of the biosynthetic pathway at a pre-squalene level.

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