New Treatments for Chagas Disease and the Relationship between Chagasic Patients and Cancers

Abstract

Chagas disease is an infectious illness with a broad distribution throughout the South American and African continents, importantly influencing human morbidity and mortality and a controversial relationship with the onset of cancers, especially of the gastrointestinal tract system. In addition, it is listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one ofthe most neglected tropical diseases. Although Chagas disease (CD) was discovered more than 100 years ago, the existing therapies show low efficacy and serious side effects and developing safer and more effective drugs remains a hard challenge. Thus, this review highlights the main, novel and promising treatments against Trypanosoma cruzi, including biomacromolecules, natural products, vaccines, and metabolic pathway targets and highlights a worsening of esophageal cancer prognosis in chagasic patients. Moreover, we also discuss the perspectives of obtaining original optimized drugs that take advantage of organic and inorganic medicinal chemistry advances, as well as molecular modeling and biotechnology.