Designing and exploring active N'-[(5-nitrofuran-2-yl) methylene] substituted hydrazides against three Trypanosoma cruzi strains more prevalent in Chagas disease patients.

Chagas disease affects around 8 million people worldwide and its treatment depends on only two nitroheterocyclic drugs, benznidazole (BZD) and nifurtimox (NFX). Both drugs have limited curative power in chronic phase of disease. Nifuroxazide (NF), a nitroheterocyclic drug, was used as lead to design a set of twenty one compounds in order to improve the anti-Trypanosoma cruzi activity. Lipinski's rules were considered in order to support drug-likeness designing. The set of N'-[(5-nitrofuran-2-yl) methylene] substituted hydrazides was assayed against three T. cruzi strains, which represent the discrete typing units more prevalent in human patients: Y (TcII), Silvio X10 cl1 (TcI), and Bug 2149 cl10 (TcV). All the derivatives, except one, showed enhanced trypanocidal activity against the three strains as compared to BZD. In the Y strain 62% of the compounds were more active than NFX. The most active compound was N'-((5-nitrofuran-2-yl) methylene)biphenyl-4-carbohydrazide (C20), which showed IC50 values of 1.17 ± 0.12 μM; 3.17 ± 0.32 μM; and 1.81 ± 0.18 μM for Y, Silvio X10 cl1, and Bug 2149 cl10 strains, respectively. Cytotoxicity assays with human fibroblast cells have demonstrated high selectivity indices for several compounds. Exploratory data analysis indicated that primarily topological, steric/geometric, and electronic properties have contributed to the discrimination of the set of investigated compounds. The findings can be helpful to drive the designing, and subsequently, the synthesis of additional promising drugs against Chagas disease.