Fighting third world disease

A £1.66m award has been made to Professors Michael Ferguson and Geoff Barton to expand their research into a potentially deadly third-world disease.

The parasite Trypanosoma brucei is transmitted by the bite of a tsetse-fly, causing human African sleeping sickness.  This disease, which causes character disintegration, coma and death if not treated, kills over 60,000 people a year in Africa. A related cattle disease, called Nagana, also prevents cattle farming in vast areas of Africa.

The Professors have received a five year Wellcome Trust Programme Grant of £1.66m to study "Trypanosome Glycomics". The project will focus on the cell-surface of the parasite and how it makes molecules that allow it to infect humans and animals. The work will involve collaboration between the groups of Professor Ferguson and Professor Barton who will use the power of modern super-computers and high-tech analytical equipment to investigate this third-world disease. Their aim is to progress drug-leads that have emerged from current research and to identify and exploit new drug targets against the African trypanosome.

Professor Ferguson said, "The current drugs to treat human African sleeping sickness are based on arsenic and are extremely poor. New, safer, medicines are urgently needed. Because of the low health-care budgets in sub-Saharan Africa (about £10 per person per year, compared with over £2-3,000 per person per year in the developed world) the pharmaceutical industry is not interested in developing medicines for these, and many other tropical diseases. University-based research is therefore critical in the search for new medicines to combat these appalling diseases."

The award will allow the employment of three biochemists and one synthetic organic chemist to assist with the research.

Professors Ferguson and Barton are Principal Investigators in the Division of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Microbiology in the School of Life Sciences. Professor Ferguson’s research seeks to understand the biochemistry of protozoan parasites that cause tropical diseases, like African sleeping sickness, Chagas' disease and malaria, and the design and synthesis of potential drug-leads against these diseases.