By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Persons who use current drug therapies to treat osteoporosis often suffer side effects that include nausea, constipation, muscle weakness, leg cramps and joint pain. Those side effects could disappear with the development of new drugs made possible by researchers at Van Andel Institute’s Laboratory of Structural Sciences.
Using X-ray crystallography, VAI researchers observed individual atoms of parathyroid hormone (PTH) and cells containing a receptor that the PTH must bind to in order to stimulate bone growth.
The observations showed researchers precisely how PTH binds to its receptor in the cell. This discovery will help drug developers design therapies that are more potent in treating osteoporosis and lack the side effects associated with current drugs.
“[It’s essential] to have a thorough understanding of how the hormone interacts with its receptor, the molecule that translates the signal from the hormone into … bone growth,” says Augie Pioszak, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at VAI and lead author of the article that presented the findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
The technique required crystallizing the hormone with its receptor, something researchers have not been able to do until now.
“Researchers have spent years trying to find the ‘magic’ conditions to grow high-quality crystals of PTH with its receptor,” says Eric Xu, Ph.D., co-author of the paper. “We’ve finally found a method that works.”
The method can be used with other receptor-hormone pairs, such as those that have therapeutic value for the treatment of Type II diabetes.
Source: Van Andel Institute
Deborah Johnson Wood is the development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.