Using a new system designed to screen large numbers of chemicals in bulk to see if they work against neglected diseases, Illinois State University researchers have found the system’s first victory–a possible new drug for schistosomiasis, which infects 200 million people worldwide.

The ISU reseachers worked with the Molecular Libraries Initiative (MLI) to do high-throughput screening of chemicals against an enzyme found in the disease. MLI is a Human Genome Project-like initiative to build a comprehensive library of small molecules and their interactions with human and other organisms’ genes and functions.

Today, only one drug is widely used against the snail-borne trematode flatworms that penetrate the skin and eventually lay eggs in the liver, gut or bladder.