{"id":211148,"date":"2025-04-11T01:25:58","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T06:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/study-provides-scaffold-to-selectively-target-drug-breakdown-process"},"modified":"2025-04-11T01:25:58","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T06:25:58","slug":"study-provides-scaffold-to-selectively-target-drug-breakdown-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/study-provides-scaffold-to-selectively-target-drug-breakdown-process","title":{"rendered":"Study provides scaffold to selectively target drug breakdown process"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/study-provides-scaffold-to-selectively-target-drug-breakdown-process2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cytochrome P450 (CYP) proteins are responsible for breaking down more than 80% of all Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs, reducing their effectiveness. However, how to prevent CYPs from doing this without off-target effects has puzzled researchers until now.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists at St. Jude Children\u2019s Research Hospital have designed new drug frameworks that selectively target CYP3A4, one of the most critical CYP proteins. Structural insights from this work offer a roadmap for future drug developers to better evaluate <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/drug+interactions\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">drug interactions<\/a> and selectively target CYP proteins. The findings are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-025-58749-8\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Nature Communications.<\/p>\n<p>CYP3A4 breaks down drugs that treat various health conditions, including the anti-cancer agent paclitaxel and the COVID-19 therapeutic nirmatrelvir. CYP3A4 <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/inhibitors\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">inhibitors<\/a> are commonly co-administered to reduce CYP3A4\u2019s effect. This includes ritonavir, which is combined with nirmatrelvir in Paxlovid for mild COVID-19 treatment. However, such CYP3A4 inhibitors often affect the similar but distinct CYP3A5 due to the two proteins\u2019 shared features, such as large and promiscuous binding sites, in addition to other unintended CYPs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cytochrome P450 (CYP) proteins are responsible for breaking down more than 80% of all Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs, reducing their effectiveness. However, how to prevent CYPs from doing this without off-target effects has puzzled researchers until now. Scientists at St. Jude Children\u2019s Research Hospital have designed new drug frameworks that selectively target CYP3A4, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}