Novel screening method to fight tropical disease Schistosomiasis

Schistosomiasis (bilharzia or snail fever) is a tropical parasitic disease caused by the worm Schistosoma affecting some 200 million people worldwide annually. Its treatment with Praziquantel remained unchanged for the past 40 years although reports suggest a reduced efficacy of this drug. Researchers from the Bio Engineering Lab of Andreas Hierlemann and Jennifer Keiser's group at Swiss TPH developed a new impedance-based platform to efficiently screen for novel antischistosomal drug compounds.