Chagas disease: Challenges in developing new trypanocidal lead compounds

Abstract

Chagas disease cycle was fully elucidated by Carlos Chagas in 1909, when he reported his discovery to the scientific community in two seminal papers. Today remains innumerous factors that limit its therapeutic treatment. One of them is the lack of new drugs in the market since is well known that the existing drugs are poorly active with low efficacy and considerable side effects. Nowadays, many efforts have been done in combinatorial chemistry and synthesis of new compounds searching for new lead compounds. The present review intends to show that a wide variety of synthetic strategies are being used for the preparation of pharmaceutically active compounds against several strains of T. cruzi with a range of potential clinical applications.