ABSTRACT
Chagas disease is an endemic parasitic infection caused by Trypanosomacruzi that affects 18-20 million people in Central and South America. Recently we described the Epoxy-alpha-Lap, an oxyran derivative of alpha-lapachone, which presents a low toxicity profile and a high inhibitory activity against T.cruzi epimastigotes forms, the non-infective form of this parasite. In this work we described the trypanocidal effects of Epoxy-alpha-Lap on extracellular (trypomastigote) and intracellular (amastigote) infective forms of two T. cruzi strains (Y and Colombian) known by their different infective profile. Our results showed that Epoxy-alpha-Lap is lethal to trypomastigote Y and Colombian strains (97% and 84%, respectively). Interestingly, Epoxy-alpha-Lap also showed a trypanocidal effect in human macrophage infected with T. cruzi Y (85.6%) and Colombian (71.9%) strains amastigote forms. Similar effects were observed on T. cruzi amastigote infected Vero cells (96.4% and 95.0%, respectively). Our results pointed Epoxy-alpha-Lap as a potential candidate for Chagas disease chemotherapy since it presents trypanocidal activity on all T. cruzi forms with low) toxicity profile.
