The study paves the way for safer drugs with no side effects

Now you can get drugs without side effects, which has affected patients for years. A new technique to precisely target molecules in cells paves the way for safer drugs with no side effects.

Researcher J. Julius Zhu and his colleagues have come up with a way to manipulate molecules from one compartment to the other. 19659004] The same molecules do different things depending on their location, the researchers determined. By manipulating the molecules, scientists can pinpoint locations to target while avoiding areas that would cause harmful side effects.

"The problem of side effects is due to the fact that you can not distinguish molecules in the same cell." If you blocked a molecule, you blocked it regardless of what it was doing , and this usually has undesirable side effects.Every drug that can treat diseases has side effects, major or minor, but usually they always have something, "he added

. Until now, drugs have targeted molecules in a very general way. If a molecule is considered harmful, researchers could try to develop a drug to block it completely.

But Zhu's new work highlights the disadvantages of this approach. A molecule can cause problems because of what it does in one part of the cell, but, at the same time, that same molecule does something completely different in other parts.

So shutting it down completely would be like trying to solve the problem of traffic congestion by banning cars.

Now, rather than roughly trying to block a molecule apart from its many functions, doctors can target a specific molecule by doing a specific thing in a specific place. This adds a new level of precision to the concept of precision medicine – medicine tailored exactly to the needs of the patient.

Zhu and his team of researchers believe that the technique will be useful for many diseases, but especially for cancers and neurological diseases. Those who, in particular, will benefit from a better understanding of what molecules could make good targets in which place.

The technique will also accelerate the development of new treatments by enabling researchers to better understand what molecules are doing and what should be targeted.
"The idea [behind the technique] is actually very simple," added Zhu

(with ANI Inputs)