An Integrated Approach to Identify New Anti-Filarial Leads to Treat River Blindness, a Neglected Tropical Disease.

ABSTRACT: Filarial worms cause multiple debilitating diseases in millions of people worldwide, including river blindness. Currently available drugs reduce transmission by killing larvae (microfilariae), but there are no effective cures targeting the adult parasites (macrofilaricides) which survive and reproduce in the host for very long periods. To identify effective macrofilaricides, we carried out phenotypic screening of a library of 2121 approved drugs for clinical use against adult Brugia pahangi and prioritized the hits for further studies by integrating those results with a computational prioritization of drugs and associated targets. This resulted in the identification of 18 hits with anti-macrofilaricidal activity, of which two classes, azoles and aspartic protease inhibitors, were fu

SUBMITTER: Tyagi R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7830784 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature