Exclusive use of a small molecule drug shows good effect on liver repair

Chinese researchers said on 17th that a small molecule drug will promote the repair and regeneration of damaged liver and it has achieved excellent therapeutic effect in mice experiments using recombinant mouse proteins.

The study is published in the new issue of the US journal Science Translational Medicine. One of the study leader, vice president and Professor Zhou Dawang of School of Life Sciences in Xiamen University said, "Previous studies of promoting repair and regeneration of tissues pay more attention to complex treatment strategies on delivering biological materials to the certain sites, while this research showed that exclusive use of the small molecule drugs are expected to promote the repair and regeneration of the liver.

The research of Professor Zhou, professor Deng Xianming from Xiamen University and Professor Yun Caihong at Peking University is focused on the Hippo signaling pathway which can regulate human organ regeneration and size. Previous studies have shown that a kind of protein kinase called Mst1 / 2 in this signal pathway prevents the continuous regeneration of multiple tissues including liver, so they wanted to develop drugs to inhibit such protein kinases. Finally they found a small molecule inhibitor and named it XMU-MP-1, a chemical drug.

Their study showed that the drug not only has made significant activity in protein and cellular level, but also has achieved excellent therapeutic effect in mouse models with tissue injuries such as acute liver injury caused by liver resection blade and the drug Tylenol. It can effectively improve the rate of liver regeneration initial stage and significantly reduce mortality in acute liver injury and so on.

In addition to liver, the drug also can be used for the repair and regeneration of the intestinal tract. The researchers said this study is the new exploration of new kinase-targeted drugs in the therapeutic field of promoting tissue regeneration and repair and has gained attention of some pharmaceutical companies. Flarebio offers recombinant proteins of good quality, such as recombinant Cdh5.