NIDDK Chemist Dr. Kenneth A. Jacobson is in the Trade News for His Contributions to Drug Development
February 12, 2001NIDDK chemist Dr. Kenneth A. Jacobson is among a handful of scientists cited in a recent Chemical & Engineering News who have made a new area of drug development blossom. They work on small, novel molecules with the potential to someday treat heart attacks, stroke, and even glaucoma. Jacobson, chief of NIDDK's Molecular Recognition Section in the Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry, creates the molecules, or ligands, to target and bind to sites called A3 receptors. These receptors sit on the surfaces of many types of cells, and they play several roles, including protecting cardiac tissue during heart attacks. When Jacobson entered the field in the early 1990s, nobody knew what the A3 receptor did. Initially, he says, he made ligands as a tool, "hoping that pharmacologists would use them to establish a role for the receptor."
Normally, the receptors respond to adenosine, a component of nucleic acids found in the body. Jacobson hopes to make new drugs by producing ligands that nudge into the A3 receptor before adenosine gets there. Depending on its shape, a particular ligand could activate or inhibit the receptors to obtain the desired pharmacological effect.
"The hottest area defined so far is cardioprotection for A3 receptor agonists [activators]," says Jacobson in the article.
Page last updated: April 17, 2008
