Virginia Tech Biochemists Looking for Solution to Sleeping Sickness

Biochemists at Virginia Tech have found a protein that is vital to a parasite that causes sleeping sickness and are looking at disrupting the protein with drugs. In doing so, they could make it impossible for the parasite to reproduce and survive.

As quoted in the market news:

The discovery, online this week in Cell Cycle, suggests multiple ways to disrupt PCNA’s function, said Zachary Mackey, an assistant professor of biochemistry in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, a Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate, and an affiliated researcher in Virginia Tech’s Vector-Borne Disease Research Group.

These include using drugs to either overexpress, deplete, or block the protein. The fact that PCNA can be exploited in a variety of ways to kill the parasite means that a wide range of small molecules or drugs could be used to deregulate it.

About sleeping sickness:

Sleeping sickness is caused by invasion of the Trypanosoma brucei parasite into the host’s bloodstream. The native African tsetse fly transmits the parasite, and as it initially spreads through the body, it causes fever, headache, and intense aches and pains, according to the World Health Organization.

In later stages of the disease, the parasite spreads to the brain, where it causes swelling, and slurred speech, confusion, and difficulty walking, followed by coma and eventually death.

Click here to read the full Virginia Tech report.