Yaser Hashem’s team at the Laboratoire Architecture et Réactivité de l’ARN at CNRS’s has discovered a new potential therapeutic target – located in the ribosome – to combat trypanosomes parasites. Using cryo-electron microscopy, researchers at the Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (CNRS/Université de Strasbourg) have analyzed the structure of these parasites in details and revealed one of their potential weak points, which has remained undetected until now. This discovery opens the path to the development of new safer therapies that are less toxic and more specific against trypanosomes, the parasites causing the Chagas disease and the African sleeping sickness. This study is published on October 26, 2017 in Structure.