2016_05_06_ISTUN_chagas

The high school of Tropical Health of the University of Navarra through its line of research of Chagas disease has signed two new agreements of partnership with the department of Parasitology of the University of Granada and the department of Science and Technological Innovation of the Università del Piemonte Orientale, in Italy. These have as goal to favor and facilitate the work of the groups of the different institutions whose goal is the search for new compounds for the treatment of this disease.

Thus, ISTUN will be the manager of the design and synthesis of new compounds while the University of Granada will be in charge of the assessment in vitro and in vivo of these compounds. The Università del Piemonte will work on a new line of synthesis with organometallic derivatives.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are between 7 and 8 million people in the world infected with Chagas disease. Each year there are around 200,000 new cases and 10,000 die from the disease. Although it is mainly present in developing countries development, especially in Latin America, in recent decades it has been observed in other developed countries such as the United States of America, Canada, many European countries and some countries in the Western Pacific. At present there are only two drugs for its treatment, nifurtimox and benznidazole. Both have significant toxic effects and relative clinical efficacy.