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.
