Avaliação in vitro e in silico da lectina de Canavalia brasiliensis (ConBr) no controle de Haemonchus contortus

Abstract

Among the main limitations for sheep farming to become self-sustaining and commercially viable are parasitic diseases, controlling these parasites efficiently has become a challenge, since the phenomenon of resistance to the commonly used synthetic chemicals has disadvantaged the effective control of the parasites. parasites, being the gastrointestinal nematodes the most important because they entail numerous economic losses. Haemonchus contortus is one of the economically most important parasites that infect small ruminants around the world. This nematode showed a great capacity to develop resistance to anthelmintic drugs, requiring the development of alternative control approaches. As lectins recognize and bind to specific carbohydrates and glycan structures present in parasites, they can be considered as an alternative for the development of new antiparasitic drugs. In this sense, this work aimed to investigate the antihelminthic effect of Canavalia brasiliensis (ConBr) lectin against H. contortus and to evaluate a possible interaction of ConBr with glycans of this parasite by means of molecular docking. ConBr showed significant inhibition of larval development of H. contortus with IC50 of 0.26 mg / mL. Molecular anchoring assays revealed that glycans containing the tri-mannoside core Man (α1-3) Man (α1-6) Man of H. contortus interact in the carbohydrate recognition domain of ConBr with an interaction value of MDS = -248, 77. Our findings suggest that the inhibition of the larval development of H. contortus is directly related to the recognition of the tri-mannosid nucleus present in the glycans of these parasites. This work is the first to report the structure-function relationships of the anthelmintic activity of plant lectins, so it is expected that this approach can collaborate as reference bases for later work, as the characterization and behavior of the interaction between these molecules, besides being able to aid in the possible elaboration of drugs with antiparasitic effects.