Leishmania chagasi is the causative agent of zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil, being domestic and stray dogs the main reservoirs. The development of the parasite involves two stages. The promastigote is extracellular and develops within the sand fly gut. The amastigote survives inside the harsh environment of the phagolysosome of mammalian host phagocytes, where pH is acidic, temperature higher than in the sand fly vector and hydrolytic enzymes act. In addition, the host phagocyte displays the nitric oxide defense mechanism against the amastigote. Promastigotes are also able to withstand NO even when they develop within the sand fly gut. This can be explained with the pre-adaptative hypothesis, which has been supported by us and others elsewhere and consists of preparation of promastigotes in advance for development towards the amastigote stage. For this reason, the comparison of NO-resistant and sensitive promastigotes is valuable. The two-dimension electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (2DE-MS/MS) approach has been performed to study differential protein abundance comparing L. chagasi NO-sensitive and resistant promastigotes. This analysis has revealed differential expression of genes directly and indirectly involved in NO-resistance, highlighting up-regulation of the glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) in NO-resistant promastigotes and down-regulation of the glutathione peroxidase (GPX) and the arginase (ARG) in NO-sensitive ones. These data are a starting point in the search of vaccine candidates and/or drug targets.