Drug Compounds are Designed To Battle against the Brain-eating Amoebae.

Brain-Amoebae can cause extremely dangerous kinds of encephalitis and much more than 95 percent of the people who acquire these rare but devastating infections are dead. Due to the high fatality rate, no specific effective treatment is currently available for fighting these pathogens, However; scientists have now developed some chemical compounds which show the potential effect at treatments in the laboratory, as per a report in ACS Chemical Neuroscience.

Naegleria fowleri and Balamuthia mandrillaris are two varieties of amoebae that trigger primary amoebic meningoencephalitis and encephalitis in granulomatous form. These are single-celled microorganisms that live in water and soil and that can enter the body through the nose or open wounds. Such pathogens can then spread to the central nervous system, whereby brain cells are killed. Patients are given high doses of many different antimicrobial agents in the very few cases that were successfully treated.

Such medications, nevertheless, are usually lacking in specificity and can have highly toxic effects. Ruqaiyyah Siddiqui and colleagues have turned to quinazolinones to make progress towards a new drug. Such compounds function against such a broad range of human targets, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and cancer, but were never evaluated against brain-eating amoebae.

The scientists synthesized 34 new derivatives of quinazolinone and studied its effects on N. Fowleri, B. Mandrillaire. Most of the new compounds have also been successful in killing the micro-organisms and reducing the harm which pathogens in a Petri dish can do to human cells. Attaching silver nanoparticles to the derivatives in some cases enhanced the behavior. Chlorine, methyl, or methoxy groups have been the most effective compounds and their toxicity to human cells was low. The researchers claim that findings suggest that quinazolinones are great candidates for experiments in drug development.

For more details: https://drugchemistry.pharmaceuticalconferences.com/

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Amelia David

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Drug Discovery Congress 2020

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