Effect of 9-hydroxy-α- and 7-hydroxy-β-pyran naphthoquinones on Trypanosoma cruzi and structure-activity relationship studies

The available treatment for the prevention and cure of Chagas disease, caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, is still unsatisfactory. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop new drugs. In the last few years, our research group has focused on finding a new chemical entity able to target the infectious bloodstream trypomastigotes. In this study, we assayed 16 β-lapachone analogous with modifications in the pyran and aromatic ring to find a new prototype with high trypanocidal activity. Interestingly, two ortho-naphthoquinones presented the best trypanocidal profile (8c and 8d with an IC 50 /24 h of 26.9 ± 1.3 and 23.5 ± 2.5 μM, respectively), which were 4 to 17 times more effective than β-lapachone (391.5 ± 16.5 μM) and the standard drug benznidazole (103.6 ± 0.6 μM). The introduction of a hydroxyl group on the compounds’ aromatic ring modulated their biological profile by increasing their activity not only for cancer cells (MDAMB435), as previously described in literature, but also against T. cruzi. The Structure-Activity Relationship (SAR) study indicated that this introduction modulated HOMO and MEP parameters, improving the trypanocidal activity.