Trypanocidal Trixikingolides From Trixis Vauthieri

Abstract

Chagas disease is an illness caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. Only two drugs are available, with the drawback of low rate of cure in the chronic phase of the disease and undesirable side effects. These facts highlight the need to find new compounds for Chagas disease chemotherapy. We describe the isolation and identification of an inseparable mixture of two new trixikingolides from Trixis vauthieri, a plant from family Asteraceae, which present outstanding in vitro trypanocidal activity, with IC50 value of 0.053 µM against the intracellular trypomastigotes and amastigotes forms of T. cruzi infecting L929 cells. The IC50 of the mixture against the host cells is 68 times higher and about 70 times more potent than benznidazole, the reference drug used as control at the experiments. The next step, which depends on obtaining larger quantities of the mixture, is to test it on mice infected with T. cruzi.