PLANNING NEW TRYPANOSOMA CRUZI CYP51 INHIBITORS USING 3D/2D QSAR STUDIES
3D-QSAR. Trypanosoma cruzi. CYP51. Structure-based drug design. Chagas disease.
Chagas disease kills over 10,000 people per year and approximately 8 million people are infected by Trypanosoma cruzi. The reference drug for treatment of the disease in Brazil, benznidazole, is the same since the 70s. In recent years many CYP51 inhibitors were tested against this enzyme of the parasite. One of them, posaconazole, was even tested during clinical trials in humans in Spain. Even though this clinical trial proved that posaconazole was not more effective than benznidazole, there’s still hope that CYP51 is a great potential target to treat T. cruzi infection. The research for new effective molecules that can treat the chronic phase of the infection is essential. 2D and 3D-Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship (QSAR) studies were used in this work to create models using the chemical structures of many published compounds that already went through either in vivo or in vitro tests. These molecules were aligned to reference crystalized ligands that inhibit CYP51 and are available in PDB (Protein Databank). After the analysis of the models, new analogues are going to be planned. Lastly, these analogues will be tested in silico using a 3D-QSAR model.