New therapeutic strategy against sleeping sickness

A newly developed small molecule selectively kills the pathogen causing sleeping sickness and Chagas disease. Scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum München, along with colleagues from the Technical University of Munich and the Ruhr University Bochum, report these findings in Science. The trick: The researchers could first determine the parasite’s Achilles heel by using modern structural biology techniques and then develop an inhibitor with a perfect fit.