Targeting drugs to reduce side effects
Consider ice cream - the base of which is frozen cream. Ingredients are then added to make different flavours. All these flavours are distinctly different but are created from the same foundation.
The same goes for actions of phosphodiesterases or PDEs - enzymes that are key targets for drugs that combat various cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
Although PDEs carry out only one reaction in cells, they inactivate small signaling molecules. As humans, we can create about 120 different "flavours" of PDEs, using the 26 different PDE genes in our genome.
After conducting a review of the drugs that act by targeting individual PDE "flavours", Donald Maurice, Director of the Cardiac, Circulatory and Respiratory Research Program at Queen's, and his international co-authors have learned that many of the drugs' side effects can be avoided.
When PDEs are inhibited, there is an increase in the rhythmic beating of the heart and blood pressure is often reduced. Common PDE-inhibiting drugs include caffeine and Viagra.
Posted: 2014 April 25
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