RT Journal Article SR Electronic(1) A1 Sen, Rupashree A1 Bandyopadhyay, Samiran A1 Dutta, Avijit A1 Mandal, Goutam A1 Ganguly, Sudipto A1 Saha, Piu A1 Chatterjee, MitaliYR 2007 T1 Artemisinin triggers induction of cell-cycle arrest and apoptosis in Leishmania donovani promastigotes JF Journal of Medical Microbiology, VO 56 IS 9 SP 1213 OP 1218 DO https://doi.org/10.1099/jmm.0.47364-0 PB Microbiology Society, SN 1473-5644, AB A major impediment to effective anti-leishmanial chemotherapy is the emergence of drug resistance, especially to sodium antimony gluconate, the first-line treatment for leishmaniasis. Artemisinin, a sesquiterpene lactone isolated from Artemisia annua, is an established anti-malarial compound that showed anti-leishmanial activity in both promastigotes and amastigotes, with IC50 values of 160 and 22 μM, respectively, and, importantly, was accompanied by a high safety index (>22-fold). The leishmanicidal activity of artemisinin was mediated via apoptosis as evidenced by externalization of phosphatidylserine, loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, in situ labelling of DNA fragments by terminal deoxyribonucleotidyltransferase-mediated dUTP nick end labelling (TUNEL) and cell-cycle arrest at the sub-G0/G1 phase. Taken together, these data indicate that artemisinin has promising anti-leishmanial activity that is mediated by programmed cell death and, accordingly, merits consideration and further investigation as a therapeutic option for the treatment of leishmaniasis., UL https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/jmm/10.1099/jmm.0.47364-0