Ion channels are attractive drug targets due to their importance in health and disease, but finding ways to target a specific ion channel selectively is a major challenge. Now, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and RMIT University in Australia have discovered that ion channels called BK channels have unique openings in their sides, which drug molecules may be able to access.
, could lead to the development of selective drugs that target the BK channel to treat a wide range of diseases.
Dr. Nimigean and her team have been exploring the structure and function of BK channels, both directly and with experiments on a bacterial version called MthK that is easier to study in the laboratory. Recently, they observed that a family of MthK- and BK-blocking compounds—not suitable as drugs but useful as laboratory tools—can access and effectively plug the MthK channel, or"pore," even when structural imaging shows that the entrance to the pore is fully closed.
The researchers also observed from existing structural data that side-openings or"fenestrations" like those in the MthK channels are present in BK channels as well.
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