Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by parasites of the Leishmania genus that affects 98 countries worldwide, 2 million of new cases occur each year and more than 350 million people are at risk. The use of the actual treatments is limited due to toxicity concerns and the apparition of resistance strains. Therefore, there is an urgent necessity to find new drugs for the treatment of this disease. In this context, enzymes from the polyamine biosynthesis pathway, such as arginase, have been considered a good target. In the present work, a chemical library of benzimidazole derivatives was studied performing computational, enzyme kinetics, biological activity, and cytotoxic effect characterization, as well as in silico ADME-Tox predictions, to find new inhibitors for arginase from Leishmania mexicana (LmARG). The results show that the two most potent inhibitors (compounds 1 and 2) have an I50 values of 52 μM and 82 μM, respectively. Moreover, assays with human arginase 1 (HsARG) show that both compounds are selective for LmARG. According to molecular dynamics simulation studies these inhibitors interact with important residues for enzyme catalysis. Biological activity assays demonstrate that both compounds have activity against promastigote and amastigote, and low cytotoxic effect in murine macrophages. Finally, in silico prediction of their ADME-Tox properties suggest that these inhibitors support the characteristics to be considered drug candidates. Altogether, the results reported in our study suggest that the benzimidazole derivatives are an excellent starting point for design new drugs against leishmanisis.

No abstract

Malaria is one of the main infectious diseases in tropical developing countries and represents high morbidity and mortality rates nowadays. The principal etiological agent P. falciparum is transmitted through the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito. The issue has escalated due to the emergence of resistant strains to most of the antimalarials used for the treatment including Chloroquine, Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine, and recently Artemisinin derivatives, which has led to diminished effectiveness and by consequence increased the severity of epidemic outbreaks. Due to the lack of effective compounds to treat these drug-resistant strains, the discovery or development of novel anti-malaria drugs is important. In this context, one strategy has been to find inhibitors of enzymes, which play an important role for parasite survival. Today, promising results have been obtained in this regard, involving the entire P. falciparum metabolism. These inhibitors could serve as leads in the search of a new chemotherapy against malaria. This review focuses on the achievements in recent years with regard to inhibition of enzymes used as targets for drug design against malaria.