Researchers at University of Birmingham and the University of Leicester recently came up with a new technique that can be used to evaluate the efficacy of therapeutic molecules which are developed to ‘adhere’ proteins together in the body. This research has opened many doors to discover and improve the line of treatment for deadly diseases such as breast cancer and parkinsonism. The intermolecular protein interactions play a vital role in all fundamental cell functions. Any slight disturbance in these interaction results in a particular disease.
Several drugs have been discovered that can disrupt these interactions and this helps to mitigate the progression of developing disease. But some diseases are caused because protein interactions doesn’t take place at all or they take place in an incorrect manner. So a new line of treatment or a new technique is developed which initiates glueing of these proteins which is proved to be highly effective in treatment of many diseases. These drugs are effective but they are not easy to find.
In recent study at, Chemical Science, researchers in the university of Birmingham’s School of Biosciences have a developed a techie that uses mass spectrometry to measure the mass of pair of proteins more accurately and it also helps to identify which ‘glue’ is most suitable and has enough strength to adhere the proteins together as it will help to develop a new line of treatment for various diseases.
Lead author Dr. Aneika Leney stated that “A healthy body depends very much on the cells, proteins being able to signal effectively. Any wrong signal can lead to disease and that could be the wrong protein sticking together- or proteins not joining up as they should. We want a drug that corrects this. Our methods provide a ‘snapshot’ of what is happening to the proteins when we add a potential drug so we can see quickly whether the ‘glue’ is working.”
The team at university of Birmingham worked with a team of chemical biologists at University of Leicester to test and verify the technique on therapeutic compounds being developed and reviewed by co-lead author Dr Richard Doveston and his fellow team mates.
Dr. Doveston states that “Looking for molecules that act as glues is not easy because things are complicated by having two proteins in the mix. At the early stage of development we often just want to find molecules that are good starting points for development, so they might not be that good as glues at this stage. The current high-throughput screening methods available to us are usually not very effective in this context. The mass spectrometry method is great because we can learn so much from the data and it can be gathered relatively easily and quickly”.
Because of high specificity of Adhering compounds to the identified proteins hence other protein binding and interactions are not usually seen. Hence its rare to see any unlikely side effects of the therapy.
Dr Leney also adds to her statement that, ‘She hopes that their approach would be implemented by pharmaceutical companies and utilised to check and test promising drug compounds that can be bound proteins together and act as a ‘glue’ in order to show a therapeutic effect.’
Content by: Ketki Bhave
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