A potential drug treatment for Tuberculosis was recently studied at the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Light Source.

Researchers say they have known for some time about the bacteria that causes TB and how it uses the bodies cholesterol as a food source. A study by a team from the University of Guelph was able to identify the structure of an enzyme that is involved in steroid degradation in another member of the same bacteria factor.

Dr. Stephen Seah, a member of the research team, says this will move scientists and pharmaceutical companies one step closer to creating drugs that can inhibit similar enzymes in M. tuberculosis, and effectively starve TB of its food source.

Using the beam-line at the CLS the team was then able to create a picture of what they call the keyhole in which drug molecules would need to fit, and to stop the enzyme in its tracks. Dr. Seah says they depended heavily on the CLS for the X-ray source to determine the structure of the enzymes.