New Drug May Treat Cystic Fibrosis

Inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis can be caused by genetic "nonsense mutations" that disrupt the way human cells make proteins. David Bedwell, Ph.D., a professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Microbiology, says scientists are now closer to producing drugs that will fix this disruption and drastically improve treatment of genetic disease.

Bedwell is a renowned researcher on the select group of genetic alterations called nonsense mutations - DNA alterations that can lead to nonfunctional or missing proteins. He presented recent findings on an experimental drug that may help to treat some cystic fibrosis patients during the Experimental Biology 2010 conference in Anaheim, Calif., April 26. This drug ataluren (formerly called PTC124) also holds promise in treating more than 2,400 different genetic disorders caused by nonsense mutations.

"When you treat a genetic disease, the bottom line is how much of the missing protein do you need to restore to have a therapeutic benefit," Bedwell says. "It comes down to the threshold of protein rescue. For some diseases, it might be 1 percent of protein you need restored, and for other diseases you may need 50 percent of protein restored."