Chemical Maps, Parasitic Diseases, and Drug Development
By Laura-Isobel McCall
Tracking molecules in the body using chemical cartography can help scientists identify new infectious disease treatments.
This Article From Issue
May-June 2022
Volume 110, Number 3
Page 148
A little girl is bitten by a kissing bug (also known as a triatomine bug). Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi) parasites from the insect’s feces enter the bite wound and start spreading through her body. They invade her cells and multiply. Her immune system kills most of the parasites on its own, but some survive. Over decades, damage from the tiny invaders may accumulate in her heart, or her esophagus, or her colon, with often deadly and debilitating effects. There is no effective treatment for a late-stage T. cruzi infection, also known as Chagas disease. The location of this damage will shape the rest of her life. We know frustratingly little about how the parasite works, but researchers are now making progress in cracking the mysteries of Chagas disease.
QUICK TAKE
- Chemical cartography allows researchers to create 3D maps of organs, which they can use to track where pathogens accumulate and where disease symptoms manifest in the body.
- Researchers have applied this technique to little-understood conditions such as Chagas disease to figure out what damage the illness inflicts on the body at the cellular level.
- These maps can be used to develop treatments that can be both easily administered and highly targeted to a specific parasite or to persistent, dangerous disease symptoms.
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