Nobel Prize could point to diabetes treatment
pharmafile | October 9, 2013 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | James Rothman, Randy Schekman, Thomas Südhof, nobel
The Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology has been won jointly by three scientists whose research has uncovered the mechanism of a major transport system within and between the body’s cells.
Scientists James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas Südhof share the award for their discoveries of machinery regulating the traffic of vesicles – small packages in which molecules are moved around.
Cells produce and export molecules such as hormones, neurotransmitters, cytokines and enzymes that have to be delivered to different places within – or outside of – that cell.
For example, insulin is manufactured and released into the blood and neurotransmitters are sent from one nerve cell to another, transported in the bubble-like vesicles to the right place at the right time.
It is work which could have implications for a number of diseases, because it is thought that molecules in effect being delivered to the wrong address in the human body can be major factors in neurological and immunological conditions as well as diabetes.
Schekman discovered a group of genes that are required for vesicle traffic, Rothman worked out the protein machinery allowing vesicles to fuse with their targets to permit this transfer, while Südhof revealed how signals instruct vesicles to release their cargo so precisely.
It is when this transport system is disturbed that problems in the body can occur because nerve activation (with transmitter substances) or metabolic control (with hormones), for example, may not happen.
The greater knowledge that the research of the three scientists has brought into how and why this might occur could therefore be crucial in understanding how such diseases might be countered.
Schekman used yeast as his model, identifying mutated genes which caused problems as well as three classes of genes that control different aspects of vesicle transport in the cell – some of these coded for proteins which were the same as those identified by Rothman in mammals.
Meanwhile Südhof had been looking for calcium-sensitive proteins in nerve cells, working out how proteins bind vesicles to the outer membrane.
Adam Hill
