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Turning a Drug Target into a Drug Candidate: A New Paradigm for Neurological Drug Discovery?

Buckingham, SD; Mann, HJ; Hearnden, OK; Sattelle, DB; (2020) Turning a Drug Target into a Drug Candidate: A New Paradigm for Neurological Drug Discovery? BioEssays 10.1002/bies.202000011. Green open access

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Abstract

The conventional paradigm for developing new treatments for disease mainly involves either the discovery of new drug targets, or finding new, improved drugs for old targets. However, an ion channel found only in invertebrates offers the potential of a completely new paradigm in which an established drug target can be re-engineered to serve as a new candidate therapeutic agent. The L-glutamate-gated chloride channels (GluCls) of invertebrates are absent from vertebrate genomes, offering the opportunity to introduce this exogenous, inhibitory, L-glutamate receptor into vertebrate neuronal circuits either as a tool with which to study neural networks, or a candidate therapy. Epileptic seizures can involve L-glutamate-induced hyper-excitation and toxicity. Variant GluCls, with their inhibitory responses to L-glutamate, when engineered into human neurons, might counter the excitotoxic effects of excess L-glutamate. In reviewing recent studies on model organisms, it appears that this approach might offer a new paradigm for the development of candidate therapeutics for epilepsy.

Type: Article
Title: Turning a Drug Target into a Drug Candidate: A New Paradigm for Neurological Drug Discovery?
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1002/bies.202000011
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.202000011
Language: English
Additional information: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Keywords: chemogenetic tool, epilepsy, L‐glutamate‐gated chloride channel, ivermectin, novel therapy
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Medicine
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Medicine > Respiratory Medicine
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10108009
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