Aptamer-based detection of disease biomarkers in mouse models for chagas drug discovery.

ABSTRACT: Drug discovery initiatives, aimed at Chagas treatment, have been hampered by the lack of standardized drug screening protocols and the absence of simple pre-clinical assays to evaluate treatment efficacy in animal models. In this study, we used a simple Enzyme Linked Aptamer (ELA) assay to detect T. cruzi biomarker in blood and validate murine drug discovery models of Chagas disease. In two mice models, Apt-29 ELA assay demonstrated that biomarker levels were significantly higher in the infected group compared to the control group, and upon Benznidazole treatment, their levels reduced. However, biomarker levels in the infected treated group did not reduce to those seen in the non-infected treated group, with 100% of the mice above the assay cutoff, suggesting that parasitemia was reduced b

SUBMITTER: de Araujo FF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4287562 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature