Protease Inhibitors to Treat Parasitic Diseases

To date, irreversible cysteine protease inhibitors have been used only as biochemical tools for theof proteases. Prototek is developing safe, effective oral protease inhibitors for a variety of theraincluding the treatment of P. carinii pneumonia, arthritis, cancer and the rejection of transplantedPrototek's inhibitors may have utility in the treatment of malaria and Chagas' disease. This researccompany to extend tits work on cysteine protease inhibitors to optimize their specificity toward theof P. falciparum and T. cruzi. A plan is presented to optimize the structures of the peptide and noninhibitors to specific parasite proteases. The synthesis of 18 peptide fragments and up to 10 non-peThe in vitro and in vivo efficacy of the inhibitors will be tested in appropriate models.