{"id":202026,"date":"2024-12-20T14:30:52","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T20:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/discovery-of-enzyme-pathway-may-lead-to-lifesaving-leishmaniasis-treatments"},"modified":"2024-12-20T14:30:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T20:30:52","slug":"discovery-of-enzyme-pathway-may-lead-to-lifesaving-leishmaniasis-treatments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/discovery-of-enzyme-pathway-may-lead-to-lifesaving-leishmaniasis-treatments","title":{"rendered":"Discovery of enzyme pathway may lead to lifesaving leishmaniasis treatments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/discovery-of-enzyme-pathway-may-lead-to-lifesaving-leishmaniasis-treatments2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A breakthrough in understanding how a single-cell parasite makes ergosterol (its version of cholesterol) could lead to more effective drugs for human leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that afflicts about 1 million people and kills about 30,000 people around the world every year.<\/p>\n<p>The findings, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-024-53790-5\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>, also solve a decades-long scientific puzzle that\u2019s prevented drugmakers from successfully using azole antifungal drugs to treat <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/visceral+leishmaniasis\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">visceral leishmaniasis<\/a>, or VL.<\/p>\n<p>About 30 years ago, scientists discovered the two species of single-cell parasites that cause VL, Leishmania donovani and Leishmania infantum, made the same lipid sterol, called ergosterol, as fungi proven susceptible to azoles antifungals. These azoles antifungals target a crucial enzyme for sterol biosynthesis, called CYP51.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A breakthrough in understanding how a single-cell parasite makes ergosterol (its version of cholesterol) could lead to more effective drugs for human leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that afflicts about 1 million people and kills about 30,000 people around the world every year. The findings, reported in Nature Communications, also solve a decades-long scientific puzzle that\u2019s [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1522],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}