The discovery of how proteins fold and what happens if they don’t, or do it wrong, has impacted medicine. Protein function and several pathologies depend on folding. Four scientists, Franz-Ulrich Hartl, Arthur Horwich, Kazutoshi Mori and Peter Walter, revealed the role of chaperones in assisting proteins to acquire their correct structure and described a failure warning system, the unfolded protein response (UPR). For their studies, the researchers will receive the 2024 Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biology and Medicine from the BBVA Foundation.
A research team based at MIT and Harvard has engineered a bacterial injection system to precisely deliver proteins to human cells. This work, published online March 29, 2023, in Nature, is important as while more and more molecular therapies are being developed, off-target effects are always a concern and precise targeting of cells and tissues can still be a challenge.
Treatment with the fusion protein QL-1005 reduced caloric intake and body weight in mice and primates. In obese animals, it also improved insulin, fasting glucose and triglyceride levels. The design belongs to the Chinese biopharmaceutical company Beijing QL Biopharmaceutical, which will begin clinical trials in a year.
