A multi-institutional team of Israeli researchers has made a breakthrough that could lead to more effective treatments for sleeping sickness, or trypanosomiasis. The condition is caused by Trypanosoma brucei, a microscopic parasite that is transmitted by the tsetse fly and is often fatal when left untreated.
A joint Israeli research team from the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot and Bar-Ilan University (BIU) in Ramat Gan has now found that damaging the protein-production capacity essentially neutralizes the sleeping sickness parasite. Conducted by Nobel Prize laureate and BIU professor Shumali Michaeli and Weizmann Institute professor of chemical and structural engineering Ada Yonath, the study found a clear vulnerability that could be exploited to make sleeping sickness treatments significantly more effective.
Published in the “Nature Communications” journal, the findings could help physicians find more effective ways of fighting the trypanosome parasite and other parasites of the same family such as the Leishmania parasite, which causes the rose of Jericho disease.
The research team found this critical vulnerability by developing a new way of attacking the trypanosome parasite via its ribosome, the site primarily responsible for protein synthesis in the cell. Damaging these sites hindered protein production in the parasites, halted their growth and ultimately led to their death, a feat that many current sleeping sickness medications struggle to achieve.
Parasites such as the trypanosome typically invade a host body and rapidly multiply until they are in sufficient enough numbers to cause negative health effects. The Israeli research team developed a means of preventing this multiplication, stopping a sleeping sickness infection before it snowballs and becomes fatal. Deleting just a single pseudouridine, which are chemical changes or modifications that stabilize RNA molecules in the trypanosome’s ribosome, caused the ribosome to lose structural protein, impaired its protein production ability and inhibited the parasite’s growth.
As the tsetse fly is only found in southern Africa, sleeping sickness is endemic to the region and is estimated to take around 50,000 to 500,000 lives in sub-Saharan Africa annually. Currently, there is no viable vaccine for sleeping sickness, and current treatments end up being ineffective as the parasites responsible for causing trypanosomiasis have developed drug resistance.
Once a person contracts the condition, they experience symptoms such as irritability, severe headaches, extreme fatigue, fever, aching muscles and joints, personality changes, steadily worsening confusion and additional neurological problems. The most effective preventative measures include wearing pants and long-sleeved shirts in light, neutral colors to limit skin exposure, and avoiding walking through dense bushes when it is hot.
The Israeli study has now opened the door for the development of more effective treatments that could potentially save tens of thousands of lives every year. And with enterprises such as PaxMedica Inc. (NASDAQ: PXMD) also conducting trials of prospective sleeping sickness treatments, it may not be long before effective medicines are available to the millions at risk of dying from this infection.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to PaxMedica Inc. (NASDAQ: PXMD) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/PXMD
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