Drugs and nanoformulations for the management of Leishmania infection: a patent and literature review (2015-2022)

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Leishmaniasis is an important disease caused by parasites of the Leishmania. Due to the urgent need for financial incentives and research and development of new anti-Leishmania, a point that stands out is the creation of patents that comprise drugs and nanoformulations in treating the disease.

Areas covered

Information on individual patents and patent families containing potential drugs and nanoformulations were obtained by searching the Orbit software (QUESTEL SAS, France) using the following terms: Leishmania; treatment; nanoparticle*; drug×. The data obtained ranged from 2015 to 2022.

Expert opinion

Meglumine antimoniate is a pentavalent antimonial widely used in the classic treatment of leishmaniasis. It is part of the classic treatment recommended by WHO, being the first-choice drug globally about 75 years ago. Thus, the need to introduce new anti-Leishmania therapies into clinical medicine is evident since cases of resistance to monotherapy and multitherapy have increased greatly. Associated with this, the search for patents that are good candidates in treating this disease assues interest in investments of financial resources and raises a ray of hope for safe, effective, and low-cost therapies to become licensed for the treatment of leishmaniasis.

KEYWORDS:

• Patent
• Leishmania
• drug
• nanotechnology
• nanoformulation
• treatment

Article highlights

• Most of the patents found used metallic, or lipid nanoparticles in formulation with antileishmanial drugs;

• Gold nanoparticles showed promising results in vitro and in vivo with no signs of aggregation, good stability, and storage half-life;

• The highest number of nanoparticle formulations to treat leishmaniasis was deposited by Indian inventors in the Indian Patent Office;

• Most nanoparticles relied on polyene therapy, i.e., Amphotericin B, with minor approaches regarding meglumine antimoniate and natural product extracts with antileishmanial activity;

• Regarding Amphotericin B nanoformulations, many inventions aim to target both fungal and leishmanial pathological conditions based on the same drug mechanism of action, thus, developing a versatile nanotool;

• The highest number of invented nanoformulations were deposited in 2016 and 2021 by India, Germany and US research institutes’ and universities.

Declaration of interests

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contribution statement

M Verdan and I Taveira did the design of the work, the first draft of the manuscript, the analysis, and interpretation of data, and produced figures and tables; FL Carmo made the data acquisition in the Orbit software; F Abreu did the manuscript revision; D Nico did the conceptualization, the final revision and the final approval to be published.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.