LeishTargets

Leishmaniasis is a group of neglected infectious diseases, with approximately 1.3 million new cases each year, for which the available therapies have serious limitations due to factors including high cost, low efficacy, high toxicity and development of resistance on the part of parasites. Therefore, it is extremely important to apply efficient and low-cost methods capable of selecting the best therapeutic targets in order to speed up the development of new therapies against those diseases. However, most studies in drug discovery are based only on the analysis of a small target group selected in an ad hoc manner, neglecting new potentially druggable targets with therapeutic importance. Thus, in the present study, we integrated computational methods that evaluate proteins in the structural, chemical and functional context, and are able to infer the druggability of the predicted proteomes of Leishmania braziliensis and Leishmania infantum, species responsible for the different clinical manifestations of leishmaniasis in Brazil. In this way, our analyzes identified a group of pharmacologically attractive proteins and our methodology also allowed the identification of drugs already developed with probable ability to interact with these potential targets, thus providing for the possibility of reusing these compounds. Our results can be used by researchers in order to test the interaction of the group of compounds and proteins, thus allowing the reuse of these drugs and expanding the possibilities of treatment for Leishmaniasis. Our results also aid in the understanding of the Leishmania species druggable proteome and provide data on subcellular localization, molecular function, protein interaction networks and protein binding sites, previously absent in databases.

- Crhisllane Vasconcelos and Antonio Rezende