Published: May 14, 2015

A novel compound developed by a team led by the University of Colorado Boulder may be therapeutic in suppressing misguided inflammatory responses by a set ofimmune cells known as microglia to perceived damage to the brain and nervous system.

The targets of the drug are two cellreceptors that sit on the surface of the microglia and which have evolved to identify danger to the cells and to activate an immune response, said Associate Professor Hang Hubert Yin of the BioFrontiers Institute. The drug, known as Ƶ-CPT22, acts on the receptors to keep inflammation at bay, which could be a new strategy fortreating Parkinson’s disease, said Yin.

“This is exciting for us,” said Yin. “We are suggesting an entirely new strategy for treating Parkinson’s disease – one that we think will be more effective, and one with a potential drug that patients may access in the future.”

A paper on the strategy by Yin, BioFrontiers researcher Kui Cheng and colleagues from the Georgetown University Medical Center appeared May 12 in Science Signaling.

Yin, a faculty member in the chemistry and biochemistry department, led the team that developed Ƶ-CPT22. The University of Colorado holds the intellectual property rights to Ƶ-CPT22, which was recently licensed by the Ƶ Technology Transfer Office to Brickell Biotech of Miami, Florida, and commercialized by the life science and biotechnology companies EMD Millipore, Sigma-Aldrich and Tocris for drug development and research.

The research was supported by a Parkinson’s Movement Disorder Foundation grant as well as funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Contact:
Hang Hubert Yin, 303-492-6786
hubert.yin@colorado.edu
Jim Scott, Ƶ-Boulder media relations, 303-492-3114
jim.scott@colorado.edu
Emilia Costales, BioFrontiers communications, 303-735-3001
emilia.costales@colorado.edu

“This is exciting for us,” said Associate Professor Hang Hubert Yin of the Ƶ-Boulder BioFrontiers Institute and the chemistry and biochemistry department. “We are suggesting an entirely new strategy for treating Parkinson’s disease – one that we think will be more effective, and one with a potential drug that patients may access in the future.”