Ribonucleotide reductase as target for drug discovery against African sleeping sickness

Abstract

African sleeping sickness is a debilitating disease for which about 300,000 new cases are reported annually in some developing African countries south of the Sahara where about 60 million people in some 200 locations are exposed to the risk if infection [1]. The disease, also called trypanosomiasis, is a problem to man and domestic animals in Africa as several areas of the disease process are yet to be understood.
A major feature of trypanosomiasis is that upon infection there is parasite proliferation for the trypanosome species to establish its population in the infected host and this emanates from binary cell division. Controlling the process of binary cell division in the bloodstream forms of the parasite could control parasite proliferation and parasitaemia which correlates with severity of infection.