An international team of researchers has long worked to prevent inflammatory disease from developing through the use of an enzyme. A common way to treat disease is to inhibit biological functions from damaging the tissues in the body. Traditionally, this is done by adding molecules that bind to harmful proteins. This is what the researchers tried, but it was not what happened. Maintaining your own DNA The researchers found that instead of blocking the inflammation, the enzyme they studied became very active. It turned out that the cell began to maintain its own DNA in a new way. The research team consists of participants from Sintef in Trondheim. Torkild Visnes works with biotechnology and nanomedicine, and is one of the researchers behind the discovery. – What we have discovered is a new way of developing medicines, he says. He explains that common medicines work like putting chewing gum in a lock, in that it blocks a function. That was what they were trying to do, but what happened was that instead of blocking the lock, the door opened. – What we found out was that when we developed such a molecule, our protein started to work faster and it started to work in a different way. The discovery has now been published in the science magazine Science. The researchers conclude that they have discovered, further developed, and characterized the effect of a new organic molecule that triggers a new function in a specific protein. The protein maintains DNA in human cells. The researchers’ discovery has far greater uses beyond repairing DNA. Photo: Stein Mortensholm / SINTEF More than repairing DNA But they believe the discovery could mean more than repairing DNA. – The basic method, ie the knowledge that this is possible and how we can do it, can be used for all possible proteins. There are no boundaries that way, says Visnes. He believes that it is one of the most important things to take on. – In practice, this means that we can go in and design new functions for proteins. It can be in medicine or in industry. There are endless possibilities here. It is limited only by creativity. The scientific work is a collaboration between researchers from Sweden, Spain, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom. The Norwegian research part has been carried out at both Sintef Industri and Sintef Ocean. Medicine for hereditary diseases Now they are continuing to work on exploring the new possibilities that have opened up. Among other things, they look at hereditary diseases. Hereditary diseases are caused by mutations in the genetic material. Such mutations destroy the function of something important. But what we do here is to target a small molecule, which can then perform something new together with target proteins. Then we can potentially repair the function of damaged proteins in hereditary diseases or cancer, says Visnes. He believes that this could have major consequences for the future. – Maybe you can imagine that this can become a medicine one day, in that our protein is important in cancer, inflammatory diseases and aging. But there is some research left to get there.
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Researchers found molecule that can repair DNA and develop medicine for hereditary diseases – news Trøndelag
