Treatment target identified for public health risk parasite

In the developing world, Cryptosporidium parvum has long been the scourge of freshwater. Its rapid ability to spread, combined with an incredible resilience to water decontamination techniques, such as chlorination, led the National Institutes of Health in the United Sates to add C. parvum to its list of public bioterrorism agents. Currently, there are no reliable treatments for cryptosporidiosis, but that may be about to change with the identification of a target molecule.