About a third of the world population is infected by helminth parasites implicated in foodborne trematodiasis. Fascioliasis is a worldwide disease caused by trematodes of the genus Fasciola spp. It generates huge economic losses to the agri-food industry and is currently considered an emerging zoonosis by the World Health Organization (WHO). The only available treatment relies on anthelmintic drugs, being triclabendazole (TCBZ) the drug of choice to control human infections. The emergence of TCBZ resistance in several countries and the lack of an effective vaccine to prevent infection highlights the need to develop new drugs to control this parasitosis. We have previously identified a group of benzochalcones as inhibitors of cathepsins, which have fasciolicidal activity in vitro and are potential new drugs for the control of fascioliasis. We selected the four most active compounds of this group to perform further preclinical studies. The compound's stability was determined against a liver microsomal enzyme fraction, obtaining half-lives of 34-169 min and low intrinsic clearance values (<13 μL/min/mg), as desirable for potential new drugs. None of the compounds were mutagenic or genotoxic and no in vitro cytotoxic effects were seen. Compounds C31 and C34 showed the highest selectivity index against liver fluke cathepsins when compared to human cathepsin L. They were selected for in vivo efficacy studies observing a protective effect, similar to TCBZ, in a mouse model of infection. Our findings strongly encourage us to continue the drug development pipeline for these molecules.
Keywords: Cathepsin inhibitors; Chalcones; Drug development; Fasciola hepatica.
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