Large, medically important class of proteins starts to yield its secrets
Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 17:00
in Health & Medicine
More than 50 percent of therapeutic drugs target GPCRs, including allergy and heart medication, drugs that target the central nervous system, and anti-depressants. Readers of the top-ranked scientific journals Science and Nature might have noticed a recent wave of articles, most recently in the July 13, 2012 issue of Science, with deep importance for biology and medicine. These papers, all published this year by collaborations headed by the Scripps Research Institute laboratory of Professor Raymond Stevens, illuminate a large and medically important family of proteins called G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs).