New Study- Tackling Drug Resistance in Sleeping Sickness with Salipro®

We are glad to highlight a recent publication in eLife, "Insights from aquaporin structures into drug-resistant sleeping sickness," which provides critical insights into the mechanisms of drug resistance in sleeping sickness.

The researchers solved the structure of the Trypanosoma brucei aquaporin TbAQP2. The findings reveal at a molecular level how essential drugs enter the parasite and, crucially, how mutations in this channel can lead to treatment failure.

Obtaining high-resolution structures of membrane proteins like TbAQP2 is often a significant technical challenge. The study demonstrates how Salipro® enabled the research:

• Protein Stabilization: TbAQP2 was reconstituted into Salipro® lipid nanoparticles. This approach provided a stable, native-like lipid environment for the protein.

• High-Resolution Structures: The stabilization was crucial for high-quality cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) data collection. The researchers successfully determined structures of TbAQP2 bound to several drugs at resolutions up to 3.2 Å

• Key Molecular Insights: The resulting structures provided a clear picture of how these drugs bind within the TbAQP2 channel and offer a new paradigm for drug-transporter interactions for future drug design efforts.

This work underscores the immense value of high-quality membrane protein structures in developing novel therapeutics against devastating diseases.

Congratulations to all the authors on this impactful publication!

Read the full paper here:
M. Matusevicius, R. A. Corey, M. Gragera, K. Yamashita, T. Sprenger, et al., Insights from aquaporin structures into drug-resistant sleeping sickness. eLife 14:RP107460 (2025).