Chemists have identified a family of compounds that may one day help prevent damage to the kidneys of lupus, a common autoimmune disease that afflicts up 2 million Americans.
one of the major complications of the disease, kidney damage, appears to come from antibodies that lock onto clean DNA from a patient. Normally, the kidneys filter blood damaged DNA, and in lupus patients misguided antibodies trigger inflammation when they bind to DNA that collects in the kidneys.
Gary Glick of the University of Michigan and Jonathan Ellman of the University of California, Berkeley, looked for a lure that mimic DNA and bind to antibodies troublesome. They have created more than 1,0 versions of a promising group of compounds called 1,4-benzodiazepines and identified those who locked in mouse antibodies with lupus. `` It's like playing the lottery every ticket you buy, '' said Glick. `` If you play big enough statistics, you are bound to win. '' Glick Ellman and report their findings in the current issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The President of the Medical Council of the Lupus Foundation of America, Evelyn Hess of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, welcomes the conclusion with caution. It is `` an interesting test tube mechanism, '' she said, which must now be tested in animals.
This is precisely the next stage of Glick. His team is now testing the most promising compound in SLE mice prone to see if it effectively prevents kidney damage. Such treatment in humans, Glick said, could have fewer side effects than immune suppression drugs currently used to treat the disease.
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