[의학신문·일간보사=김현기 기자] In the process of treating diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases, a new factor that regulates a system called ‘autophagy’, which is essential to maintain cellular homeostasis in our body, is attracting attention.
Professor Dong-Ha Kim’s team from the Department of Anatomy, College of Medicine, Catholic University of Korea, announced that they have recently verified the function of ‘C/EBP’, a new regulator of autophagy, for the first time in the world using single-cell genome analysis.
According to Professor Kim’s team, autophagy is an intracellular decomposition and recycling system that removes unnecessary proteins or damaged organelles to maintain cellular homeostasis. is also inevitably decomposed.
Therefore, in order to maintain a certain level of autophagy, the gene must be activated to make autophagy protein, and the amount of the protein must be sufficiently maintained in the cell. However, problems with this system are known to cause serious diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Accordingly, considering that the process of regulating autophagy and the new discovery of its regulators have been a very important task in overcoming related diseases, this research result by Professor Kim’s team is likely to lead to problems with autophagy function. It is expected to increase the possibility of developing drug candidates for various diseases.
Specifically, in this study, Professor Kim’s team found that C/EBP is an autophagy regulator that specifically works according to a previously unknown type of nutrient deficiency. found to activate genes.
In particular, autophagy modulators using the mechanism of C/EBP, which act specifically in the amino acid deficiency identified in this study, are used in the development of therapeutic agents for various metabolic diseases, degenerative brain diseases, cancer and cardiovascular diseases caused by autophagy function problems. It is expected that it will be usefully used by targeting the regulation of amino acids.
Professor Kim said, “I am surprised and delighted to have successfully completed the first study to predict and verify new autophagy regulators using single-cell genome analysis. We want to lay the foundation for developing therapeutic agents for intractable diseases by verifying factors faster and more accurately.”
Meanwhile, the study was published in the world-renowned scientific journal ‘Nucleic Acids Research (IF 19.16)’ as a thesis titled ‘Study on the function of amino acid deficiency-specific autophagy regulator C/EBP using single-cell transcriptome analysis’.