Citotoxicity evaluation of Pterogyne nitens extracts against Trypanosoma cruzi and macrophages

• Grant number: 08/06021-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2008
• End date: November 30, 2010
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Parasitology - Protozoology of Parasites
• Principal Investigator: Regina Maria Barretto Cicarelli
• Grantee: Mariana da Costa Siqueira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas (FCFAR). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

There are nowadays about 18 million people in Latin America infected with the protozoan parasite of Tripanosomatidae family, Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes the Chagas' disease, transmited by the triatomine bugs.The therapeutic is still ineffective, in spite of the efforts of researchers in many assays with diferent substances in animals. They have observed that many compounds have a suppressor effect, however many of these present high toxicity, low absorption and resistence. In current literature there are researches about the tripanocidal activity with a big diversity of natural extracts, specially from plants, with their isolated compounds and/or semi-synthetics. These investigations can be made using colorimetric methods, like the reduction of MTT [3-(4,5-dimethyltiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide] into formazan that have an easy and fast application, besides it is very objective and enables the assay of many compounds at the same time. This methodology was realized successfull with mammal cells and many protozoans, including T. cruzi. This project has the purpose to evaluate the tripanocidal activity of Pterogyne nitens extracts and their fractions in the epimastigote form of Trypanosoma cruzi using the colorimetric method (MTT) already mentioned, which is a fast and efficacious method. The substances with a significant activity will be evaluate by phase contrast microscopy for the evaluation of possible morphologic changes in the parasite and also for citotoxixity evaluation in isolated macrophages from isogenic not-infected mice .