title: Exploiting Knowledge on Leishmania Drug Resistance to Support the Quest for New Drugs.
abstract: New drugs are needed to control leishmaniasis and efforts are currently on-going to counter the neglect of this disease. We discuss here the utility and the impact of associating drug resistance (DR) studies to drug discovery pipelines. We use as paradigm currently used drugs, antimonials and miltefosine, and complement our reflection by interviewing three experts in the field. We suggest DR studies to be involved at two different stages of drug development: (i) the efficiency of novel compounds should be confirmed on sets of strains including recent clinical isolates with DR; (ii) experimental DR should be generated to promising compounds at an early stage of their development, to further optimize them and monitor clinical trials.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: Aya
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hefnawy
authors.affiliation: Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: Maya
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Berg
authors.affiliation: Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium. Electronic address: JCDujardin@itg.be.
authors.forename: Jean-Claude
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Dujardin
authors.affiliation: Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium. Electronic address: gdemuylder@itg.be.
authors.forename: Géraldine
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: De Muylder
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000981:Antiprotozoal Agents / Q000494:pharmacology / Q000627:therapeutic use; D055808:Drug Discovery; D004351:Drug Resistance; D006801:Humans; D007891:Leishmania / Q000187:drug effects; D007896:Leishmaniasis / Q000188:drug therapy
chemical_list: D000981:Antiprotozoal Agents
keywords: antimonials; drug development; drug resistance; leishmaniasis; miltefosine