A Potential Anti-Prion Drug With "Unprecedented" Potency

Main Category: CJD / vCJD / Mad Cow Disease
Also Included In: Clinical Trials / Drug Trials;  Neurology / Neuroscience
Article Date: 03 Nov 2006 - 11:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

The urgent search for a medication to treat prion diseases has led scientists in Germany to synthesize a new group of compounds, including one that is 15 times more potent than an approved drug now being tested in clinical trials. Their report is scheduled for the Nov. 2 issue of the biweekly ACS Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Prions are infectious proteins that cause brain disorders like Mad Cow Disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) in humans. Peter Gmeiner and colleagues note that the recent emergence of a new form of CDJ, linked to consumption of infected beef mainly in Great Britain, intensified the search for anti-prion compounds. Most potential drugs have proved ineffective, often because they could not enter brain tissue where prions reside. One promising drug, however, is in clinical trials. That drug is quinacrine, already approved for several other medical conditions.

Gmeiner's group describes the chemical synthesis and early laboratory testing of a family of anti-prion compounds that cross into brain tissue and combat prions. One of those compounds has what the report describes as "unprecedented" anti-prion activity, with 15 times greater potency than quinacrine.

ARTICLE #4

"A Chimeric Ligand Approach Leading to Potent Antiprion Active Acridine Derivatives: Design, Synthesis, and Biological Investigations"

CONTACT:

Peter Gmeiner, Ph.D.
Friederich-Alexander University
Erlangen, Germany

###

The American Chemical Society (ACS) News Service PressPac is your access point for discoveries in fields ranging from astronomy to zoology, which are reported in the 35 peer-reviewed journals of the American Chemical Society. With more than 158,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society. Chemistry is the science that transforms lives, and these news alerts are from the leading edge of that science at ACS headquarters.

The information in this press package is intended for your personal use in news gathering and reporting and should not be distributed to others. Anyone using advance ACS News Service Weekly Press Package information for stocks or securities dealing may be guilty of insider trading under the federal Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

The American Chemical Society -- the world's largest scientific society -- is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

ACS News Service Weekly PressPac -- Oct. 25, 2006

Contact: Michael Woods
American Chemical Society

• Additional
• References
• Citations