Abstract
Chemotherapy against the neglected tropical disease visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is suboptimal with only four licensed drugs. Amphotericin B (AmB), despite its toxicity, remained a second line drug for a long time. However, the demonstration that liposomal AmB is highly effective against VL propelled it, despite its cost, to a first line drug in many countries. While several ongoing efforts are aiming at finding cheaper and stable AmB-formulations, an alternative strategy is the development of less-toxic AmB derivatives. We show here that two less-toxic AmB derivatives with the carboxylate at position 16 of AmB derivatized to a methyl urea (AmB-MU) or amino urea (AmB-AU) are active in vitro against Leishmania donovani, both as free-living parasites as well as their intracellular form. Both less-toxic derivatives, similarly to AmB, target the ergosterol pathway of L. donovani. While the AmB-AU derivative showed female-specific liver toxicity in vivo, the AmB-MU derivative was well-tolerated and more effective than AmB against experimental VL. These studies are an important step for improving AmB-based therapy against a prevalent parasitic disease.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 2472-2482 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | ACS Infectious Diseases |
Volume | 7 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 13 2021 |
Keywords
- amphotericin
- Leishmania
- methyltransferase
- next-generation sequencing
- resistance
- sterols
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Infectious Diseases