Chagas Disease Treatment Compounds Licensed

Chagas disease, a blood-borne condition that's not well known in the United States, afflicts millions of people in Mexico and Central and South America, and is the leading cause of heart failure in Latin America.

A group of potent chemical compounds discovered at the UW and Yale University could lead to a new treatment for Chagas. The two universities have licensed the compounds to the Institute for OneWorld Health, a non-profit pharmaceutical company in San Francisco.

Chagas disease is caused by Trypanosoma cruzi, a protozoan parasite that is spread by a biting insect or through blood transfusions. The parasite has infected between 16 million and 18 million people in Latin America, and the disease is endemic in 21 countries ranging from Mexico to Argentina. An estimated 100,000 people in the United States also are infected. About 50,000 people die from Chagas disease each year.
UW and Yale researchers discovered some azole compounds that can inhibit production of a chemical necessary for the parasite T. cruzi to survive. Those compounds now have been licensed to the Institute for One World Health to create drugs against Chagas disease in the developing world.

Contributing to this discovery were Dr. Frederick Buckner, assistant professor of medicine; Dr. Michael Gelb, professor of chemistry and adjunct professor of biochemistry; Dr. Wesley Van Voorhis, professor of medicine and adjunct professor of pathobiology; and Dr. Kohei Yokoyama, research assistant professor of chemistry, all from the UW. The team also included Yale University's Dr. Andrew Hamilton, deputy provost for science and technology and professor of chemistry.