Protein Superglue! New Approach to Pick Therapeutic Drugs Developed for a Healthy Body

The efficacy of therapeutic molecules that glues proteins together in the human body can now be tested using a recently developed testing method. The protein glue tester is made by researchers from the prestigious University of Leicester and the University of Birmingham.

Effectiveness of Therapeutic Drugs to Glue Proteins Explained

Severe diseases, including Parkinson's disease and breast cancer, have a potential solution from new, numerous drug compounds. These drugs are complex but can be screened for efficacy, and the said research aimed to help drug developers perfect the testing phase, reports ANI News.

The interaction of proteins to one another is essential to any cell functions found in the human body. These functions take part in the contributed effects toward a healthy body. However, if these functions were to be disrupted, diseases occur.

Many drugs are capable to break or connect the protein interactions. Some of these drugs are also using the reverse process, which is breaking the interactions, to end the disease. On the other hand, few diseases are effects of the fully interrupted protein interaction. In some cases, the disease roots to the protein activities not happening at all. To resolve this issue, a drug must work and attach these proteins together. But unfortunately, these glue drugs are challenging to find.

University of Birmingham's bioscience experts can develop a system that measures the accurate mass of a protein pair combined with the glue drug. According to the study published in the journal Chemical Science entitled "Discovering protein-protein interaction stabilisers by native mass spectrometry," mass spectrometry was utilized by experts to examine and determine drugs most effective at gluing protein cells. The selected drugs will be a potential answer to treat the diseases.

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Why Do Proteins Need to Be Attached?

University of Birmingham School of Biosciences expert and principal author of the study Aneika Leney said that the signals of the protein cells are crucial to keeping a healthy body up and running. When these signals are wrong, it will entangle wrong proteins, attaching themselves to a different sort, repelling them to the correct ones, and could end up in a disastrous disease.

Leney said that their team is in pursuit of the correct drug that is perfect for the job. And through their recent study, the team can identify the strong glue drugs. The experts were able to find and examine the drug's reaction towards the proteins using their developed 'snapshot' methods.

The team from the University of Birmingham collaborated with the chemical biology experts from the University of Leicester to observe and gather data on the protein to protein gluing procedure, a matter that is also studied by co-author Richard Doveston. Their findings on the protein cells are published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry entitled "Fragment-based Differential Targeting of PPI Stabilizer Interfaces."

Doveston emphasizes that finding the molecules that function similarly to glue for cells is challenging, especially if two protein cells are already present and entangled. Another difficulty is that the glue compounds are also very specific to the proteins. Through the use of the mass spectrometry method, they can pinpoint what drug is good and what is not, reports Lab Manager.