• Macromolecular Research
• /
• v.16 no.6
• /
• pp.481-488
• /
• 2008

Apoptosis is a natural cell suicide mechanism to maintain homeostasis. However, many of the diseases encountered today are caused by aberrant apoptosis where excessive apoptosis leads to neurodegenerative disorders, ischemic heart disease, autoimmune disorders, infectious diseases, etc. A variety of antiapoptotic agents have been reported to interfere with the apoptosis pathway. These agents can be potential drug candidates for the treatment or prevention of diseases caused by dysregulated apoptosis. Obviously, world-wide pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are gearing up to develop antiapoptotic drugs with some products being commercially available. Polymeric drug delivery systems are essential to their success. Recent R&D efforts have focused on the chemical or bioconjugation of antiapoptotic proteins with the protein transduction domain (PTD) for higher cellular uptake with antibodies for specific targeting as well as with polymers to enhance the protein stability and prolonged effect with success observed both in vivo and in vitro. All these different fusion antiapoptotic proteins provide promising results for the treatment of dysregulated apoptosis diseases.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.183-191
• /
• 2024

The Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) serves as a critical cellular mechanism dedicated to maintaining protein homeostasis, primarily within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). This pathway diligently responds to a variety of intracellular indicators of ER stress with the objective of reinstating balance by diminishing the accumulation of unfolded proteins, amplifying the ER's folding capacity, and eliminating slow-folding proteins. Prolonged ER stress and UPR irregularities have been linked to a range of neuropsychiatric disorders, including major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. This review offers a comprehensive overview of the UPR pathway, delineating its activation mechanisms and its role in the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disorders. It highlights the intricate interplay within the UPR and its profound influence on brain function, synaptic perturbations, and neural developmental processes. Additionally, it explores evolving therapeutic strategies targeting the UPR within the context of these disorders, underscoring the necessity for precision and further research to effective treatments. The research findings presented in this work underscore the promising potential of UPR-focused therapeutic approaches to address the complex landscape of neuropsychiatric disorders, giving rise to optimism for improving outcomes for individuals facing these complex conditions.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.193-201
• /
• 2018

Connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) is a novel fibrotic mediator, which is considered to mediate fibrosis through extracellular matrix (ECM) synthesis in diabetic cardiovascular complications. Statins have significant immunomodulatory effects and reduce vascular injury. We therefore examined whether fluvastatin has anti-fibrotic effects in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and elucidated its putative transduction signals. We show that advanced glycation end products (AGEs) stimulated CTGF mRNA and protein expression in a time-dependent manner. AGE-induced CTGF expression was mediated via ERK1/2, JNK, and Egr-1 pathways, but not p38; consequently, cell proliferation and migration and ECM accumulation were regulated by CTGF signaling pathway. AGE-stimulated VSMC proliferation, migration, and ECM accumulation were blocked by fluvastatin. However, the inhibitory effect of fluvastatin was restored by administration of CTGF recombinant protein. AGE-induced VSMC proliferation was dependent on cell cycle arrest, thereby increasing G1/G0 phase. Fluvastatin repressed cell cycle regulatory genes cyclin D1 and Cdk4 and augmented cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors p27 and p21 in AGE-induced VSMCs. Taken together, fluvastatin suppressed AGE-induced VSMC proliferation, migration, and ECM accumulation by targeting CTGF signaling mechanism. These findings might be evidence for CTGF as a potential therapeutic target in diabetic vasculature complication.

• BMB Reports
• /
• v.49 no.9
• /
• pp.455-456
• /
• 2016

Mutations of APC and KRAS are frequently observed in human colorectal cancers (CRCs) and the Wnt/β-catenin and Ras pathways are consequently activated in a significant proportion of CRC patients. Mutations in these two genes are also known to synergistically induce progression of CRCs. Through a series of studies, we have demonstrated that inhibition of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway negatively regulates Ras stability, therefore, Ras abundance is increased together with β-catenin in both mice and human CRCs harboring adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) mutations. In a recent study, we identified KY1220, a small molecule that simultaneously degrades β-catenin and Ras by inhibition of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, and obtained its derivative KYA1797K, which has improved activity and solubility. We found that KYA1797K binds the RGS domain of axin and enhances the binding affinity of β-catenin or Ras with the β-catenin destruction complex components, leading to simultaneous destabilization of β-catenin and Ras via GSK3β activation. By using both in vitro and in vivo studies, we showed that KYA1797K suppressed the growth of CRCs harboring APC and KRAS mutations through destabilization of β-catenin and Ras. Therefore, our findings indicate that the simultaneous destabilization of β-catenin and Ras via targeting axin may serve as an effective strategy for inhibition of CRCs.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.346-351
• /
• 2012

Cells show various stress signs when they are challenged with severe physiological problems. Majority of such cellular stresses are conveyed to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and unfolded protein response (UPR) serves as typical defense mechanism against ER stress. This study investigated an interaction between ER stress agents using macropage cell line Raw 264.7. When activated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS), the cell lines showed typical indicators of ER stress. Along with molecular chaperones, the activation process leads to the production of additional inflammatory mediators. Following activation, the macrophage cell line was further treated with TUN and characterized in terms of chaperone expression and cytokine secretion. When treated with TUN, the activated macrophage cell leads to increased secretion of IL-6 although expression of ER stress markers, GRP94 and GRP78 increased. The secretion of cytokines continued until the addition of BFA which inhibits protein targeting from ER to Golgi. However, secretion of cytokines was ceased upon dual treatments with BFA and TG. This result strongly implies that cells may differently deal with various polypeptides depending on the urgency in cellular function under ER stress. Considering IL-6 is one of the most important signal molecules in macrophage, the molecule might be able to circumvent ER stress and UPR to reach its targeting site.

• Genomics & Informatics
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.53-61
• /
• 2016

Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular Apicomplexan parasite and a causative agent of toxoplasmosis in human. It causes encephalitis, uveitis, chorioretinitis, and congenital infection. T. gondii invades the host cell by forming a moving junction (MJ) complex. This complex formation is initiated by intermolecular interactions between the two secretory parasitic proteins-namely, apical membrane antigen 1 (AMA1) and rhoptry neck protein 2 (RON2) and is critically essential for the host invasion process. By this study, we propose two potential leads, NSC95522 and NSC179676 that can efficiently target the AMA1 hydrophobic cleft, which is a hotspot for targeting MJ complex formation. The proposed leads are the result of an exhaustive conformational search-based virtual screen with multilevel precision scoring of the docking affinities. These two compounds surpassed all the precision levels of docking and also the stringent post docking and cumulative molecular dynamics evaluations. Moreover, the backbone flexibility of hotspot residues in the hydrophobic cleft, which has been previously reported to be essential for accommodative binding of RON2 to AMA1, was also highly perturbed by these compounds. Furthermore, binding free energy calculations of these two compounds also revealed a significant affinity to AMA1. Machine learning approaches also predicted these two compounds to possess more relevant activities. Hence, these two leads, NSC95522 and NSC179676, may prove to be potential inhibitors targeting AMA1-RON2 complex formation towards combating toxoplasmosis.

• Molecules and Cells
• /
• v.27 no.6
• /
• pp.629-634
• /
• 2009

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are part of multi-protein networks called 'receptosomes'. These GPCR interacting proteins (GIPs) in the receptosomes control the targeting, trafficking and signaling of GPCRs. PDZ domain proteins constitute the largest protein family among the GIPs, and the predominant function of the PDZ domain proteins is to assemble signaling pathway components into close proximity by recognition of the last four C-terminal amino acids of GPCRs. We present here a machine learning based approach for the identification of GPCR-binding PDZ domain proteins. In order to characterize the network of interactions between amino acid residues that contribute to the stability of the PDZ domain-ligand complex and to encode the complex into a feature vector, amino acid contact matrices and physicochemical distance matrix were constructed and adopted. This novel machine learning based method displayed high performance for the identification of PDZ domain-ligand interactions and allowed the identification of novel GPCR-PDZ domain protein interactions.

• The Korean Journal of Food & Health Convergence
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.18-25
• /
• 2018

Proteins play a key role in many functions such as metabolic activity, differentiation, as cargos and cell fate regulators. It is necessary to know about the markers involved in male fertility in order to develop remedies for the treatment of male infertility. But, the role of the proteins is not limited to particular function in the biological systems. Some of the proteins act as ion channels such as catsper and proteins like Nanos acts as a translational repressor in germ cells and expressed in prenatal period whose role in male fertility is uncertain. Rbm5 is a pre mRNA splicing factor necessary for sperm differentiation whose loss of function results deficit in sperm production. DEFB114 is a beta defensin family protein necessary for sperm motility in LPS challenged mice where as TEX 101 is a plasma membrane specific germ cell protein whose function is not clearly known u to now. Gpr56 is another adhesion protein whose null mutation leads to arrest of production of pups in rats. Amyloid precursor protein role in Alzheimer's disease is already known but it plays an important role in male fertility also but its function is uncertain and has to be considered while targeting APP during the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. The study on amyloid precursor protein in male fertility is a novel thing but requires further study in correlation to alzheimer's disease.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.32 no.9
• /
• pp.1209-1216
• /
• 2022

To better understand the effects of PEGylation and biotinylation on the delivery efficiency of proteins, the cationic protein lysozyme (LZ) and anionic protein bovine serum albumin (BSA) were chemically conjugated with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and biotin-PEG to primary amine groups of proteins using N-hydroxysuccinimide reactions. Four types of protein conjugates were successfully prepared: PEGylated LZ (PEG-LZ), PEGylated BSA (PEG-BSA), biotin-PEG-conjugated LZ (Bio-PEG-LZ), and biotin-PEG-conjugated BSA (Bio-PEG-BSA). PEG-LZ and Bio-PEG-LZ exhibited a lower intracellular uptake than that of LZ in A549 human lung cancer cells (in a two-dimensional culture). However, Bio-PEG-BSA showed significantly improved intracellular delivery as compared to that of PEG-BSA and BSA, probably because of favorable interactions with cells via biotin receptors. For A549/fibroblast coculture spheroids, PEG-LZ and PEG-BSA exhibited significantly decreased tissue penetration as compared with that of unmodified proteins. However, Bio-PEG-BSA showed tissue penetration comparable to that of unmodified BSA. In addition, citraconlyated LZ (Cit-LZ) showed reduced spheroid penetration as compared to that of LZ, probably owing to a decrease in protein charge. Taken together, chemical conjugation of targeting ligands-PEG to anionic proteins could be a promising strategy to improve intracellular delivery and in vivo activity, whereas modifications of cationic proteins should be more delicately designed.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
• /
• v.31
• /
• pp.9.1-9.5
• /
• 2016

Objectives There have been developed to use targeting ability for antimicrobial, anticancerous, gene therapy and cosmetics through analysis of various membrane proteins isolated from cell organelles. Methods It was examined about the lysosomal membrane protein extracted from lysosome isolated from HeLa cell treated by 100 ppm melanin for 24 hours in order to find associated with targeting ability to melanin using by 2-dimensional electrophoresis. Results The result showed 14 up-regulated (1.5-fold) and 13 down-regulated (2.0-fold) spots in relation to melanin exposure. Conclusions It has been found that lysosomal membrane proteins are associated with melanin to decolorize and quantity through cellular activation of lysosome.