Monday 13 July 2009

Ubiquitin - a promising target for new drug development

Where potential approaches to drug discovery are concerned, ubiquitylation might not be the first word that springs to mind. But the 2006 approval of bortezomib (Velcade) and recent research into inhibitors of the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway have raised expectations for this biological process as a target for novel treatments for a range of diseases.

A recent review article published in Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets, Targeting the proteasome pathway, by Yokosawa and Tsukamoto explores the emergence of the proteasome and other members in the ubiquitin–proteasome pathway as novel therapeutic targets. In a related piece in Scrip World Pharmaceutical News, Informa Analyst Ian Schofield provides his Expert View on ubiquitylation as an attractive route to novel drug design.

Yokosawa and Tsukamoto review the current understanding of the ubiquitin–proteasome pathway and describe inhibitory mechanisms for tageting it, while Schofield discusses the RUBICON network and the recent creation of the Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling, which with government funding hopes to pinpoint novel drug targets for use in designing medicines for inflammation, cancer and infectious diseases.

Read both articles at:
Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets and
Scrip World Pharmaceutical News

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