A team of scientists from the University of Dundee, in collaboration with research groups from Munich and Grenoble have determined the structure of a key target enzyme for novel drug development to treat a wide range of infectious diseases including malaria, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted bacterial infections. The results of their collaboration have just been published in the prestigious Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences.
Professor Bill Hunter, a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow at the University of Dundee said "New drugs to treat infectious diseases are urgently sought in particular to combat the resurgence of drug resistant tuberculosis and malaria. These two diseases kill or incapacitate millions of people worldwide and in particular place a heavy burden on children living in the developing world. There is a paucity of drugs now available to treat the increasingly prevalent drug-resistant forms of these diseases and also the drug resistant forms of many bacterial infections including sexually transmitted infections."
"Modern techniques, genomic and proteomic methods serve to identify new therapeutic targets and one such is the enzyme CDP-ME kinase. This kinase helps to make many of the key molecules that bacteria and parasites need to live and multiply. A molecule that can prevent the kinase from working normally will poison and kill the pathogenic organisms. The researchers have applied crystallographic and biological chemistry methods to determine the structure of the kinase which now provides a template for the design or discovery of small molecules that will inhibit the enzyme and support the longer term objective which is to develop new potent therapies for a wide range of microbial infections. These drugs could potentially help the treatment of not only malaria and tuberculosis, but also toxoplasmosis, Chlamydia, meningitis and cholera."
Professor Bill Hunter heads a research team seeking to improve the understanding of how pathogenic microbes deal with the toxic by-products of normal metabolism, aspects of drug resistance and the biosynthesis of essential metabolites. The research is a multidisciplinary programme founded on single crystal X-ray diffraction studies that will, in the longer term, contribute to the development of improved treatments for a range of microbial infections.
Professor Hunter is from Greenock and came to Dundee in 1996 having worked at the Universities of Manchester, Cambridge and Sydney.
Notes to Editors
The three groups are based in:
The research in Dundee has been funded by the Wellcome Trust.
By Jenny Marra, Head of Press 01382 344910 j.m.marra@dundee.ac.uk