Exploring leishmania biochemistry to understand effect of spermidine starvation and identification of novel drug candidates

Abstract

Leishmaniasis is caused by different species of Leishmania In order to develop a better drug candidate we chose to explore two different pathways of Leishmania redox metabolism and protein prenylation pathway Spermidine synthase a key enzyme for second step of redox metabolism pathway of parasite catalyzes formation of spermidine We have identified hypericin as a novel inhibitor of spermidine synthase of Leishmania donovani Hypericin has shown significant antileishmanial activity with IC