Neglected tropical diseases and infectious illnesses: potential targeted peptides employed as hits compounds in drug design

Abstract

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) and infectious illnesses, such as malaria, tuberculosis and Zika fever, represent a major public health concern in many countries and regions worldwide, especially in developing ones. They cause thousands of deaths per year, and certainly compromise the life of affected patients. The drugs available for therapy are toxic, have considerable adverse effects, and are obsolete, especially with respect to resistance. In this context, targeted peptides are considered promising in the design of new drugs, since they have specific action and reduced toxicity. Indeed, there is a rising interest in these targeted compounds within the pharmaceutical industry, proving their importance to the Pharmaceutical Sciences field. Many have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be used as medicines, plus there are more than 300 peptides currently in clinical trials. The main purpose of this review is to show the most promising potential targeted peptides acting as hits molecules in NTDs and other infectious illnesses. We hope to contribute to the discovery of medicines in this relatively neglected area, which will be extremely useful in improving the health of many suffering people.

Keywords:

• Viruses
• bacteria
• protozoa
• potential treatments
• peptide-based drug design

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful to Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq): Giarolla J. for financial support [422928/2016-0], Santos S.S. for scholarship [153232/2018-8] and Machini MT for research fellowship [308658/2015], to Coordena¸ão de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) for Silva J.V. scholarship and to Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) and to CNPq Machini MT for financial support and research fellowship [2017/00689-0, 308658/2015-9, respectively].

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