Computational Chemogenomics Drug Repositioning Strategy Enables the Discovery of Epirubicin as a New Repurposed Hit for Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax
Letícia Tiburcio Ferreira, Juliana Rodrigues, Gustavo Capatti Cassiano, Tatyana Almeida Tavella, Kaira Cristina Peralis Tomaz, Djane Clarys Baía-da-Silva, Macejane Ferreira Souza, Marilia Nunes do Nascimento Lima, Melina Mottin, Ludimila Dias Almeida, Juliana Calit, Maria Carolina Silva de Barros Puça, Gisely Cardoso de Melo, Daniel Y. Bargieri, Stefanie Costa Pinto Lopes, Marcus Lacerda, Elizabeth Bilsland, Per Sunnerhagen, Bruno Junior Neves, Carolina Horta Andrade · Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy · 2020
Widespread resistance against antimalarial drugs thwarts current efforts for controlling the disease and urges the discovery of new effective treatments. Drug repositioning is increasingly becoming an attractive strategy since it can reduce costs, risks, and time-to-market. Herein, we have used this strategy to identify novel antimalarial hits. We used a comparative in silico chemogenomics approach to select Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax proteins as potential drug targets and analyzed them using a computer-assisted drug repositioning pipeline to identify approved drugs with potential antimalarial activity.