To meed the increasingly high demand of new and more effective drugs, a method known as rational drug design is used to develop drugs. This method designs and chemically optimizes candidate drugs to make them more effectively bind to the targets, and it often involves the use of molecular design software. Using this method, scientists have already developed some drugs, such as HIV protease inhibitors. However, rational drug design needs a lot of time, materials and money. Now, an article published online Sep. 26 in the journal Nature Biotechnology suggests an alternative method of drug development -- ancestral sequence reconstruction, if the drug itself is a protein. The scientists report that by learning how evolution has already optimized proteins could help develop innovative drugs. In the study, the scientists focused on factor VIII (FVIII), which is an essential blood-clotting protein. FVIII loss or deficient can result in hemophilia A, a rare bleeding disorder. Now, recombinant human FVIII is used to treat the disorder. But its effects are not lasting and it may trigger immune response. Using available genomic sequence data on FVIII of other mammals, such as mice, rats, rabbits, alpacas, hamsters, manatees and so on, the researchers found 78 putative earlier, ancestral versions that would have been present in ancient mammals. Three of the proteins were expressed at higher levels in cells lines. The researchers assumed that hyperactive variants of FVIII might be better treatments for hemophilia A. The method ancestral sequence reconstruction also has shortcomings. It can not be used to develop non-protein drugs. But anyway the method would facilitate drug development. CusAb provides researchers Recombinant Itgb3.
