Basel biologist wins science prize for thalidomide insights
Structural biologist Nicolas Thomä has been awarded this year’s Otto Naegeli Prize for medical research, considered one of the most prestigious scientific awards in Switzerland.
This content was published on April 26, 2022 - 12:49
German-born Thomä, from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) in Basel, is particularly concerned in his research with the degradation of disease-causing proteins, the FMI said in a statementExternal link on Tuesday. He and his team showed how some small molecules contribute to targeted protein degradation by functioning as “molecular glues”.
“Such molecular glues have the potential to target proteins that were previously thought to be undruggable,” the FMI wrote.
Research from Thomä’s laboratory explained how the molecular glue thalidomide and its analogues function at the molecular level.
From 1957 thalidomide, marketed by West German company Chemie Grünenthal, was used to treat nausea during pregnancy. It gained notoriety at the beginning of the 1960s when it was discovered that it caused birth defects, usually involving babies’ limbs, whereupon it was withdrawn from the market. Later, however, the active ingredient experienced a renaissance in the fight against various forms of blood cancer. This is because thalidomide can mark disease-causing proteins as waste and release them for degradation, which causes the cancer cells to die.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/basel-biologist-wins-science-prize-for-thalidomide-insights/47545386
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