Antileishmanial metallodrugs and the elucidation of new drug targets linked to post-translational modifications machinery: pitfalls and progress

Abstract

Despite the increasing number of manuscripts describing potential alternative antileishmanial compounds, little is advancing on translating these knowledges to new products to treat leishmaniasis. This is in part due to the lack of standardisations during pre-clinical drug discovery stage and also depends on the alignment of goals among universities/research centers, government and pharmaceutical industry. Inspired or not by drug repurposing, metal-based antileishmanial drugs represent a class that deserves more attention on its use for leishmaniasis chemotherapy. Together with new chemical entities, progresses have been made on the knowledge of parasite-specific drug targets specially after using CRISPR/Cas system for functional studies. In this regard, Leishmania parasites undergoe post-translational modification as key regulators in several cellular processes, which represents an entire new field for drug target elucidation, once this is poorly explored. This perspective review describes the advances on antileishmanial metallodrugs and the elucidation of drug targets based on post-translational modifications, highlighting the limitations on the drug discovery/development process and suggesting standardisations focused on products addressed to who need it most.