Antimalarial and Antileishmanial Activities of Aroyl-Pyrrolyl-Hydroxyamides, a New Class of Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors

Abstract

Members of the genus Leishmania are parasitic protozoans that infect about two million people per annum (5), and they are emerging as serious opportunistic infective agents in human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients (4). Malaria parasites are responsible for 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths annually, primarily in Africa (10). The effort to find new antimalarial agents is still a high priority given the increasing malaria emergency largely due to multidrug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum strains. The histones of P. falciparum have recently been proposed as targets for drug treatment of blood stage parasites (6). They also play an important role in chromatin remodeling in trypanosomatids, which include Leishmania species and trypanosomes (3).