The velvet theory
August 22, 2019Grupos_DGA Regulatory bases for the granting of subsidies to finance your research activity
August 23, 2019
Our body knows how to search for and destroy damaged proteins. Why not redirect that natural system to eliminate malignant proteins? It is the novel strategy that Aragonese biotechnologist Cristina Mayor Ruiz, first author of the study that has just been published in 'Molecular Cell', is investigating at the Molecular Medicine Research Center of the Vienna Academy of Sciences. This approach could revolutionize the way anti-cancer drugs are designed.
Targeted protein degradation (TPD) is a novel strategy that could lead to the development of new drugs to treat cancer more effectively. A study has just been published in the scientific journal 'Molecular Cell' that describes the molecular mechanisms necessary to direct the action of our protein degradation systems towards what interests us. This is the method our body naturally uses to search for and destroy damaged proteins. The first author of the study is the Aragonese researcher Cristina Mayor Ruiz, who is doing her postdoc at the CeMM, Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Academy of Sciences of Vienna (Austria). The first clinical trials of this promising therapeutic strategy are already underway.
The protein degradation machinery that we all have in our bodies is the basis of this new therapeutic approach that could revolutionize the way we design drugs against cancer and other diseases. Once again, as with immunotherapy, the aim is to activate mechanisms against cancer that we already have in our body. “If we learn to reprogram these efficient mechanisms to fight cancer, the results could represent a real revolution,” says Mayor. In this case, “we synthesize small molecules, called degraders, to reprogram our degradation machinery and eliminate proteins of therapeutic interest: for example, a mutated protein that causes cancer.” Something of special interest is that “targeted protein degradation (TDP) offers a real alternative to try to attack malignant proteins until now unattainable by the inhibitors on which traditional medicines are based,” he explains. Proteins as relevant as KRAS, which is mutated in a third of tumors, including some as lethal as pancreatic tumors.
A little over a year ago, biotechnologist Cristina Mayor Ruiz joined Georg Winter's group at the Molecular Medicine Research Center, one of the leading centers in directed protein degradation (TDP) worldwide. Although she was born in Soria, she also considers herself very Aragonese, since her family moved to Zaragoza when she was 2 years old. During her thesis at the National Cancer Research Center in Madrid, she discovered new mechanisms of resistance to chemotherapy.
