Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have found a small molecule capable of manipulating an immune process that plays an important role in cancers and autoimmune diseases.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have found a small molecule capable of manipulating an immune process that plays an important role in cancers and autoimmune diseases.
Their discovery is reported in an Angewandte Chemie paper titled « Discovery of the First Selective Nanomolar Inhibitors of ERAP2 by Kinetic Target-Guided Synthesis. »
They discovered the molecule—and enzyme inhibitor—after first studying how the immune system works and why some diseases can be resistant to treatments.
« Tumors have the ability to present cell-surface markers in the form of non-self peptide antigens, or neoantigens, which renders them exquisitely sensitive to recognition and elimination by T-cells, a form of immune cells that kill tumor cells upon recognition of neoantigens, » said study corresponding author Marlene Bouvier, UIC professor of microbiology and immunology at the College of Medicine.
