BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Selective degradation could be on horizon for imids

November 1, 2018 10:59 PM UTC

A Science study published Thursday suggests selective degradation of hard-to-drug zinc finger transcription factors could be achieved by modifying thalidomide or its analogs, collectively called imids. The results put forth a recipe to predict which of the thousands of zinc fingers in the proteome interact with an imid of interest.

The team from Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research builds on work from groups including Celgene Corp. (NASDAQ:CELG) showing thalidomide or its analogs recruit zinc fingers to cereblon (CRBN), a subunit of the E3 ubiquitin ligase. Recruited zinc fingers are then tagged for degradation (see "Cereblon Ambition")...