LONDON (Reuters) - Dutch scientists said on Wednesday they had developed a three-dimensional model of a brain protein that may lead to new drugs to help people quit smoking or to treat Alzheimer's and schizophrenia.
The protein, produced by glia cells in the central nervous system, helps to transmit messages between brain cells that control functions such as memory, attention and addiction.
"It will give us a new goal and a new method for rational drug design," August Smith, a neurologist at Vrije University in Amsterdam, said in a telephone interview.
In a study in the science journal Nature, Smith and his colleagues described how the protein acts as part of a receptor, a type of door or link, for a brain signaling chemical called acetylcholine that is involved in memory.
The three-dimensional structure of the protein, developed by Titia Sixma and structural biologists at the Dutch Cancer Institute, will allow researchers to look at it on a computer screen to see where acetylcholine binds to it.
"By having the binding pocket we can try to make new drugs that target these receptors. By doing so we hope we can influence particular neuronal functions and not others," said Smith.
Acetylcholine receptors are also involved in the release of other neurotransmitters including dopamine, which produces feelings of satisfaction and pleasure and serotonin, the brain chemical associated with mood.
Smokers get addicted to nicotine because it induces the release of dopamine.
Smith said the research was still in its early phases but the discovery of the protein and it structural model would give researchers a new method to test drugs to treat addiction, memory loss and other symptoms related brain disorders.
"The next step is to try to develop drugs that are specific and that will activate specific types of receptors," said Smith.
©Reuters May 16 2001 2:32PM