Treatment and drug development against free-living pathogenic amoebae

Free-living pathogenic amoebae are cosmopolitan unicellular eukaryotic organisms, which can cause several serious infections in humans and animals. They are causative agents of amoebic encephalitis, which are very rare and acute diseases of the central nervous system, that almost always lead to the death of the patient. Even though the importance of these pathogens has been increasing in recent years, the development of treatment procedures and drugs against them is very ineffective and unsatisfactory. Treatment and drug development is complicated mainly because of the complex biological structure of pathogens and limited knowledge of metabolic pathways and the biochemical reactions that are occurring in them, which are crucial for the development of effective drugs. In this bachelor thesis I focus on the pathogenic species Naegleria fowleri, Balamuthia mandrillaris and the pathogenic genus Acanthamoeba, which is the causative agent of encephalitis and acanthamoeba keratitis. In the first part of this bachelor thesis, I generally characterize the different representatives of free- living pathogenic amoebae and describe the clinical picture of individual diseases. In the second part I address the issue of treatment. Firstly, I describe current therapeutic options and issues of the treatment of..