How do peptides penetrate cells? Two sides of the same coin
The simple transport of drugs directly into cells is one of the primary goals of the pharmaceutical industry. In large part, researchers still don't possess a detailed understanding at the molecular level of the processes responsible for transporting substances into and out of cells. In collaboration with colleagues from the Czech Republic and Germany, the research team of Pavel Jungwirth from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague) has discovered a previously unknown mechanism by which short peptides are able to penetrate cells and in principle, could serve as carriers of drug molecules. The results of their research have now been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .