The fate of the resident
Views on peptides: Russia is leading in the creation of fundamentally new drugs
Tatiana Bateneva, News of ScienceThe Skolkovo Foundation has identified the first residents in the biomedical cluster.
One of them was the company "Pharma bio", created at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It will develop medicines based on regulatory peptides – compounds that our body itself creates and uses for fine-tuning of all systems.
Having created thousands of medicines, science has not been able to make them absolutely safe. Each drug has undesirable side effects and contraindications to use. Therefore, scientists around the world are looking for substances that could be treated without harm to the body. One of the main directions was suggested to them by the human body itself.
Regulatory peptides were discovered more than a hundred years ago. It turned out that special substances consisting of amino acids and interconnected by specific bonds work in us. They subtly adjust a variety of processes occurring in the body.
An era of intense interest in peptides in general and the creation of drugs based on them in particular has begun. With history, perhaps, everything.
Secrets of the thymus– In the 80s, I was finishing my dissertation when military doctors asked for help – to find an effective immunostimulator among biologically active substances that the thymus secretes, – recalls Vladislav Deigin, a leading researcher at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Biological Sciences.
– That's how it happened that it became both my hobby and my life's work at the same time.
The thymus is a small gland behind our sternum that produces immune cells known as T cells. Some of them protect us from enemies penetrating from the outside, while others, on the contrary, do not allow other immune cells to aggressively attack their own body.
The work in the laboratory is rather monotonous and boring at first glance: scientists isolated bioactive complexes from the thymus, then cleaned them of ballast, then tried to isolate individual molecules... We haven't found the 12 most active compounds yet, tested them and identified the two best ones. As a result, the best remained, it was called timogen. He turned out to be the same immunostimulator that they were looking for.
Antagonists and companionsThe body produces thousands or even tens of thousands of regulatory peptides – as many as it needs.
How to find and identify them all? Previously, the isolation of pure biologically active substances from natural "extracts" was a matter of the art of chemists. About 20 years ago, technology replaced manual skill and intuition, monster devices turned into compact boxes standing on the table. It became possible to carefully synthesize these compounds from "bricks" – individual amino acids. They copy natural substances, so they are more friendly to the body than traditional "chemistry". In addition, today peptide drugs are on average ten times cheaper than some traditional ones.
Chemists began to create new peptides – in addition, thymogen, consisting of two amino acids, was added one more. As a result, we received a compound that somehow acted on the bone marrow. Checked – it turned out to be an active blood-forming stimulant. So the drug stemokin turned out. Among hundreds of synthesized compounds in a row, one worked somehow unusually. Tested – it turned out that it can "slow down" too active immunity, that is, treat autoimmune diseases. So thymodepressin was born. We investigated compounds that could be used as super–painkillers, and along the way we found a stress protector - a peptide that can protect against stress, soothe. It has already been made into a veterinary drug...
When you talk about the work of scientists in this way, it seems that everything in it is clear, understandable and smooth. In fact, everything here is like an expedition to an unknown land: you can't relax, bury something, underestimate something. And it is very important that there are reliable satellites nearby.
– There was a time when science fell below the plinth, – says Professor Vladislav Deigin. – Now we have so many young people at the Institute, so many burning eyes and – most importantly – there are conditions for work. Including thanks to Skolkovo.
While we are ahead of the whole planetAll proteins known to science consist of 20 amino acids.
Peptides (in fact, they are fragments of proteins, short sequences of amino acids) are no exception. But there are innumerable combinations of them.
– If we compare the information stored in the human genome with one planet, then the information contained in proteins is a Galaxy, and in peptides it is already the Universe, – laughs Dagin. – And we are still only at the edge of it.
In total, 60 synthetic peptide drugs have been registered in the world. 14 of them are in our country. Those four original Russian drugs, licenses for which were sold to highly developed countries, are also peptide. This is an undisputed leadership. After all, all the best–selling medicines in the world today, bringing billions of dollars in profits, are precisely proteins and peptides.
The whole world is closely watching what is happening in the Russian peptide "bins". The Peptos-Pharma company, which is headed by Deigin, has already tested more than 200 promising peptide compounds. Something is already in production, something is at the stage of clinical trials. First, a drug that reduces the craving for alcohol. By all estimates, it can be effective for the treatment of about half of those suffering from alcoholism. Secondly, it is the same stress detector that was discovered along the way and made for animals, only now it is already an option for people.
And there are two more "libraries" on the way, as scientists now say. That is, groups of compounds that can be effective in solving two of the most serious problems of modern medicine. The first is therapeutic vaccines. Not the usual ones that protect us from infections.
And therapeutic ones – for example, from Alzheimer's disease, that is, genetically dependent senile dementia. With it, brain cells clog up amyloid plaques – unnecessary proteins that disrupt its work. Chemists have designed original harmless compounds that will not allow plaques to attach to brain cells. An article about this was published in a prestigious international magazine.
The reaction of the scientific world is ambiguous. But six of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies have already teamed up to develop new drugs for Alzheimer's disease. So the race here is going to be serious.
The second promising library will overcome the only drawback of modern peptide preparations. Now they can be injected either with a syringe or by injection into the nose. Both are uncomfortable. The task is to turn them into pills. To do this, they need to be broken down in the body much slower than now. Deigin already knows how to do this. But here begins the field of trade secrets, patent law and other important things.
We are accustomed to criticize the domestic pharmaceutical industry for backwardness and sluggishness. It is customary to catch up with those who have run far ahead. Peptide preparations, where Russia plays in the leader's yellow jersey, are still our priority and our pride.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru02.03.2011