Antiparasitic Natural Products from the Australian Marine Organisms

• 作 者: YunjiangFeng;
• 机 构: Eskitis Institute Griffith University Australia
• 出 处: 中国上海第七届国际新药发明科技年会
• 发表日期: 2009年期

　　Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT),also known as African Sleeping Sickness,is a fatal disease transmitted by a protozoan parasite,Trypanosoma brucei.According to the latest figure from the World Health Organisation (WHO),African sleeping sickness threatens more than 60 million people in resource-poor regions of Africa.Because the disease predominantly afflicts the very poor,it is designated as a neglected tropical disease.Four main drugs currently used to combat this disease including suramin,pentamidine,melarsorprol and eflorithine.All these drugs have undesirable side-effects and new strains of T.brucei are showing cross-resistance to some of these agents.The quest to discover antiparasitic lead compounds has led to a joint venture between Eskitis Institute and Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi).The collaborative effort aims at combining the chemical diversity and biological relevance of natural products with the power of high throughput screening (HTS) to expedite the search for biological active compounds that could form the basis for new anti-trypanosomal drugs.