Introduction: Leishmaniasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by protozoa of the genus Leishmania. Worldwide, approximately 1.5-2 million new cases of leishmaniasis and 20,000-30,000 deaths occurs each year. Effective treatment for all forms of leishmaniasis have numerous adverse effects contributing to poor adherence and/or treatment interruption by the patient. Development of novel therapies, as multitarget drugs, for example, can contribute to accelerate discover safer, more active, and patient-compliant drugs for leishmaniasis treatment.
Areas covered: In this review, authors summarize pharmaceutical agents for treatment of leishmaniasis developed between 2014 and 2019, which includes synthetic and natural drugs for specific treatments, as well as considering new approaches and strategies using drug delivery system.
Expert opinion: Universities or public research institutes produced most of the patents related to pharmaceutical agents for treatment of leishmaniasis in this review, and the majority of the inventions disclosed did not conduct clinical trials. In other words, there is still a lot of investment to be done for the identification of new drugs.
Keywords: Leishmania; cutaneous leishmaniasis; drugs; intellectual property; mucosal leishmaniasis; natural products; visceral leishmaniasis.