ASU scientists work on anticancer drug design
The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation has provided financial backing for a scientific project of Altai State University. The project entitled “Designing Medical Drugs on the Basis of Synthetically Generated Peptides for Blocking Co-Stimulatory Molecules” is supervised by Executive Director of Russian-American Anti-Cancer Center, Candidate of Biology Andrey I. Shapoval.
“We are planning to develop peptide medicines that will interact with molecules participating in immune response regulation. Such drugs can be used for cancer therapy, immune response stimulation in cancer patients, as well as for treatment of autoimmune diseases. These are diverse medical products, but the purpose is the same – similar molecules will participate in inhibition and immune response stimulation,” explained Andrey I. Shapoval.
The project will be getting finance for 3 years. ASU scientists are going to create medical drugs ready to fall under serious pharmacological and preclinical evaluation. Everything will depend on functional activity of the products.
“Currently, we are planning to design 6 medical products. For that purpose we will create a panel of 5–10 peptides interacting with molecules that take part in immune response regulation. However, it is hard to predict the exact number of products that we will produce in the course of our research. We have already built a collection of peptides interacting with molecules of our interest. Now we are to find out whether these peptides possess immune modulating properties or not. We also continue building up a peptide library, which is one of the most important part of our work in the framework of the project and will have a significant impact on the final outcome,” emphasized Andrey I. Shapoval.
“Government financing is a vital support for our project. Firstly, we now can proceed to development of the peptide medicines. Secondly, it confirms the fact that our research team is headed in the right direction. The experts have processed our application and considered the project worth financing, which means that this area of science is important for our country,” summarized the scientist of Altai State University.