Sleeping Sickness Breakthrough
Published March 31st, 2010
British and Canadian scientists say they have identified a potential treatment for sleeping sickness with a drug could attack an enzyme the parasite causing the illness needs to survive.
They say the orally-administered drug could be ready for human clinical trials in about 18 months. Sleeping Sickness is spread by the bite of a tsetse fly, is caused by a parasite attacking the central nervous system.
Professor Paul Wyatt, director of the programme at the University of Dundee in Scotland, said: “This is one of the most significant findings made in recent years in terms of drug discovery and development for neglected diseases.
The World Health Organization estimates there are between 50,000 and 70,000 cases of the disease a year, with a further 60 million people at risk of infection.
The research in Dundee was backed by partners at the University of York in England and the Structural Genomics Consortium in Toronto, Cananda.
