Matusevicius, M. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2026

HANSEN: An Integrated Structural and Functional Proteome Resource for Structure-Guided Drug Discovery in Mycobacterium leprae

Leprosy remains a leading infectious cause of preventable disability, yet its causative agent, Mycobacterium leprae (M. leprae), is structurally under-characterised. Only ten Protein Data Bank (PDB) entries represent seven of its 1,603 protein-coding genes. We present HANSEN, a proteome-wide structural and functional resource for M. leprae. Monomeric and oligomeric models were generated with AlphaFold 3, Boltz-1, Boltz-2 and Chai-1, and annotated with per-residue confidence, predicted aligned error and, for assemblies, interface confidence. Ligand-binding pockets were predicted with AF2BIND, P2Rank and fpocket, template-derived ligands were modelled within oligomeric complexes, residue-level B-cell epitope propensity was estimated with DiscoTope-3.0, and gene essentiality was transferred from Mycobacterium tuberculosis transposon-sequencing labels. These features are integrated in a relational database with interactive visualisation and combined into a calibrated Target Priority Score that ranks all 1,603 proteins into four tiers and recovers established antimycobacterial targets. HANSEN (https://hansen-leprosy.medschl.cam.ac.uk/home) provides a practical basis for target prioritisation and structure-guided drug discovery in leprosy.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2025

Insights from aquaporin structures into drug-resistant sleeping sickness

Trypanosoma brucei is the causal agent of African trypanosomiasis in humans and animals, the latter resulting in significant negative economic impacts in afflicted areas of the world. Resistance has arisen to the trypanocidal drugs pentamidine and melarsoprol through mutations in the aquaglyceroporin TbAQP2 that prevent their uptake. Here we use cryogenic electron microscopy to determine the structure of TbAQP2 from Trypanosoma brucei, bound to either the substrate glycerol or to the sleeping sickness drugs, pentamidine or melarsoprol. The drugs bind within the AQP2 channel at a site completely overlapping that of glycerol. Mutations leading to a drug-resistant phenotype were found in the channel lining. Molecular dynamics simulations showed the channel can be traversed by pentamidine, with a low energy binding site at the centre of the channel, flanked by regions of high energy association at the extracellular and intracellular ends. Drug-resistant TbAQP2 mutants are still predicted to bind pentamidine, but the much weaker binding in the centre of the channel observed in the MD simulations would be insufficient to compensate for the high energy processes of ingress and egress, hence impairing transport at pharmacologically relevant concentrations. The structures of drug-bound TbAQP2 represent a novel paradigm for drug-transporter interactions that could provide new mechanisms for targeting drugs into pathogens and human cells.

molecular biology↗