Cellular trafficking in trypanosomatids: a new target for therapies?

Pathogenic trypanosomatids cause a plethora of diseases marked by the lack of efficient vaccines and therapies. As a consequence, studies are being co nducted that are geared towards the understanding of basic mechanisms and v arious biological aspects of these parasites that might be used as targets for new developments in these areas. One such aspect is the understanding o f specific cellular trafficking mechanisms that might be attacked with the intention of disease control. In this paper, we give an overview of our cur rent knowledge of cellular targeting mechanisms in trypanosomatids, with sp ecial emphasis on our data related to lysosomal targeting of cysteine prote inases in Leishmania. (C) 2001 Australian Society for Parasitology Inc. Pub lished by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.