Experts from the Murcian Institute of Biosanitary Research Virgen de la Arrixaca (IMIB-Arrixaca), in collaboration with the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), the Hospital Clinic, and the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute of Barcelona, have described the mechanism of action of an anti-inflammatory molecule to develop more effective treatments against pathologies related to chronic inflammation, such as rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.
It was previously known that all these diseases shared a group of proteins, called inflammasome, related to the process of chronic inflammation that produces further development of the aforementioned pathologies.
However, the exact mechanism that certain compounds exerted on this group of proteins was unknown and, therefore, it was difficult develop new treatments against these diseases.
The team of researchers, led by Pablo Pelegrín, has now discovered the way in which this inflammatory reduction occurs in its interaction with a molecule called MCC950. The results are published in Nature Chemical Biology.
“Using very advanced molecular biology techniques, we have identified, for the first time, the mechanism of action of the molecule MCC950 —which was created in the 90s by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer but which until now had not been described for its molecular mechanism—,” explains Pelegrin.
More effective and less aggressive drugs
The significance of this discovery lies in the possibility of designing new drugs that are much more effective and less aggressive, that act directly on the target of this protein with a lower dose.
Pelegrin adds that “understanding how drugs or molecules work is essential for the clinical development of these compounds and new therapies to treat chronic inflammatory diseases, such as ulcerative colitis or rheumatoid arthritis, and metabolic or degenerative disorders, such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s; all of them pathologies that currently do not have a definitive treatment.”
On the methodology used, Ana Tapia-Abellán, principal investigator of the article, highlights the development of a technique that allows to study in real time and within cells how these proteins change their distribution. “This drug inhibits the proteins that cause inflammation,” he adds.
To reach this discovery, the Blind Docking (BD) tool, designed by the group, has been used to process in detail the most important interactions between drugs under study and the proteins responsible for the development of diseases.
Source: SINC
