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Antikinetoplastid Activity of Sesquiterpenes Isolated from the Zoanthid Palythoa aff. clavata

2021; Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute; Volume: 14; Issue: 11 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3390/ph14111095

1424-8247

Carlos J. Bethencourt-Estrella, Nathália Nocchi, Atteneri López‐Arencibia, Desirée San Nicolás-Hernández, Marı́a L. Souto, Blanca Suárez‐Gómez, Ana R. Díaz‐Marrero, José J. Fernández, Jacob Lorenzo‐Morales, José E. Piñero,

Insect Pest Control Strategies

Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease are neglected tropical diseases that cause problems in developing countries. The causative agents, Leishmania spp. and Trypanosoma cruzi, produce a clinical picture that can be fatal for the patient, such as Chagas heart disease, visceral leishmaniasis and megacolon, among others. Current treatments for these diseases are not very effective and highly toxic, since they require very prolonged treatments. The development of innovative, effective and safe drugs to fight infections caused by these parasites remains a challenge. For this reason, in recent years, there has been an increase in the search for new therapies. In this study, the antikinetoplastid activity of 13 sesquiterpene lactones obtained from Palythoa aff. clavata was screened against L. amazonensis, L. donovani and T. cruzi. The results revealed that the sesquiterpene lactones anhydroartemorin (2), cis,trans-costunolide-14-acetate (3) and 4-hydroxyarbusculin A (11) were the most selective against the kinetoplastid species studied. These molecules seem to induce the mechanisms involved in an apoptotic-like death or programmed cell death (PCD) in the kinetoplastids, and since they do not cause necrosis, the inflammatory events associated with this type of cell death will not be triggered.