Protein study opens path to new disease treatments: New Zealand scientists

Findings of a joint New Zealand-Australian study could lead to new treatments in a range of diseases including Parkinson's disease, gastric cancer and melanoma, New Zealand scientists said Tuesday.

The team of researchers, led by biochemist Dr Peter Mace, of New Zealand's Otago University, studied a protein called Apoptosis signal-regulating kinase 1 (ASK1).

Kinases were signalling proteins that put tags on other proteins that could turn them on or off, which in turn could make a cell divide, die, move or have any number of other responses, Mace said in a statement.

ASK1 played an important role in controlling how a cell responded to cell damage, and could push the cell towards a process of programmed cell death for the good of the body, if damage was too great.

This key role was reflected in ASK1's name "apoptosis" was an ancient Greek word meaning "falling off", and was used to describe the process of programmed dying of cells, rather than their loss by injury.

The research team found ASK1 had unexpected parts to its structure that helped control how the protein was turned on, and that an entire family of ASK kinases shared these features.

"We now know a lot more about how ASK1 gets turned on and off, this is important because in diseases such as Parkinson's, stomach cancer and melanoma, there can be either too much or too little ASK1 activity," said Mace.

The findings added to understanding of how cells could trigger specific responses to different threats, such as oxidants, which damage the body's tissues by causing inflammation, and damage.

Kinases were excellent targets for developing new drugs because they had a "pocket" in their structure that such compounds could bind to, but to develop better drugs, far more about how they were controlled was needed. Endit