2348 Lafora disease premature termination codons (PTCs) are likely candidates for suppression by aminoglycosides

Several human studies show positive signals, while research methods and sample sizes continue to develop.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: A small molecule therapy is within reach to treat a molecular mechanism known to result in thousands of fatal diseases. For 10% of patients with a genetic disease, a nonsense/STOP mutation/premature termination codon (PTC) is the underlying cause of their malady. PTCs prematurely stop protein synthesis and yield truncated proteins. Truncated proteins typically provide little to no proper function or activity and are rapidly degraded; thus, disease is imminent. Recent work has demonstrated that small molecules including aminoglycosides can cause the ribosome to readthrough these PTCs. Thus, PTC readthrough with small molecules is a very attractive approach for treating diseases caused by PTCs. Small molecules that promote readthrough act on the ribosome and induce a ribosomal conformational change. In this conformation, the PTC is not recognized by the translational machinery and an amino acid is incorporated into the growing peptide chain, thus protein synthesis continues and does not stop. The use of a single small molecule to readthrough various PTC mutations has been repeatedly effective for in vitro studies and some of these have progressed to clinical trials. Although there has been success in defining these small molecules, the field has discovered that every PTC is unique and likely requires a different small molecule. Thus, developing a cell cu

Evidence level

Several human studies show positive signals, while research methods and sample sizes continue to develop.

Browse all related research

Filter the research library by this study's title keywords, author, or publication year.