Ion channels are attractive drug targets due to their importance in health and disease, but finding ways to target a specific ion channel selectively is a major challenge.
Reviewed by Lily Ramsey, LLMAug 31 2023 Now, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and RMIT University in Australia have discovered that ion channels called BK channels have unique openings in their sides, which drug molecules may be able to access. The finding, published Aug. 31 in Nature Chemical Biology, could lead to the development of selective drugs that target the BK channel to treat a wide range of diseases.
The other co-senior author of the study is Dr. Toby Allen, a professor at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. The first author, Dr. Chen Fan, was a postdoctoral research associate in the Nimigean Lab in the Department of Anesthesiology during the study. To resolve this conundrum, the researchers turned to structural imaging methods, experiments with normal and mutated MthK, and, in Dr. Allen's laboratory, computer modeling of the interactions between the channel-blocking compounds and the MthK ion channel.
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