For the first time, an international team of scientists recreated in the lab the molecule that allows the tsetse fly to feed on blood. It’s a powerful yet small anticoagulant with a unique and strong binding to thrombin, the key enzyme of the coagulation pathway. X-ray diffraction measurements at two synchrotron facilities ––ALBA and ESRF–– were instrumental to understand the structure and the mechanism of action of this molecule, which suggests it is also a promising platform for designing improved anticoagulant drugs.
In the waiting rooms of health care facilities around the world, millions of patients take anticoagulants every day. These are life-saving drugs for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, which now are also being explored for their benefits to patients with advanced symptoms of COVID-19.
And, as incredible as it may seem, the tsetse fly, responsible for the sleeping sickness disease in humans, is now on the spotlight in the efforts to develop more powerful and safer anticoagulants.
In a study co-authored by Bárbara Calisto, researcher at the ALBA Synchrotron, an international team of scientists has become the first to recreate in the lab the molecule that the tsetse fly uses to prevent coagulation when it bites to feed. These bites are also the entry channel for the parasite that causes sleeping sickness, a life-threatening disorder, if untreated. And the reason why the tsetse fly has been dubbed as the fly of death in Africa.
Read more on the ALBA website
Image: Bárbara Calisto at the XALOC beamline of the ALBA Synchrotron
Credit: ALBA