Drug discovery: Insights from the invertebrate Caenorhabditis elegans

S Giunti, N Andersen, D Rayes… - Pharmacology …, 2021 - Wiley Online Library
Therapeutic drug development is a long, expensive, and complex process that usually takes
12–15 years. In the early phases of drug discovery, in particular, there is a growing need for …

Squalamine and trodusquemine: two natural products for neurodegenerative diseases, from physical chemistry to the clinic

R Limbocker, S Errico, D Barbut, TPJ Knowles… - Natural Product …, 2022 - pubs.rsc.org
Covering: 1993 to 2021 (mainly 2017–2021) Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases are
neurodegenerative conditions affecting over 50 million people worldwide. Since these …

Small-molecule sequestration of amyloid-β as a drug discovery strategy for Alzheimer's disease

GT Heller, FA Aprile, TCT Michaels, R Limbocker… - Science …, 2020 - science.org
Disordered proteins are challenging therapeutic targets, and no drug is currently in clinical
use that modifies the properties of their monomeric states. Here, we identify a small …

Cytosolic aggregation of mitochondrial proteins disrupts cellular homeostasis by stimulating the aggregation of other proteins

U Nowicka, P Chroscicki, K Stroobants, M Sladowska… - Elife, 2021 - elifesciences.org
Mitochondria are organelles with their own genomes, but they rely on the import of nuclear-
encoded proteins that are translated by cytosolic ribosomes. Therefore, it is important to …

Multistep Inhibition of α-Synuclein Aggregation and Toxicity in Vitro and in Vivo by Trodusquemine

M Perni, P Flagmeier, R Limbocker… - ACS chemical …, 2018 - ACS Publications
The aggregation of α-synuclein, an intrinsically disordered protein that is highly abundant in
neurons, is closely associated with the onset and progression of Parkinson's disease. We …

An open-source platform for analyzing and sharing worm-behavior data

A Javer, M Currie, CW Lee, J Hokanson, K Li… - Nature …, 2018 - nature.com
To the Editor—Animal behavior is increasingly being recorded in systematic imaging studies
that generate large datasets. To maximize the usefulness of these data, there is a need for …

Modeling Alzheimer's Disease in Caenorhabditis elegans

J Alvarez, P Alvarez-Illera, J Santo-Domingo… - Biomedicines, 2022 - mdpi.com
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most frequent cause of dementia. After decades of research,
we know the importance of the accumulation of protein aggregates such as β-amyloid …

Extracellular protein homeostasis in neurodegenerative diseases

MR Wilson, S Satapathy, M Vendruscolo - Nature Reviews Neurology, 2023 - nature.com
The protein homeostasis (proteostasis) system encompasses the cellular processes that
regulate protein synthesis, folding, concentration, trafficking and degradation. In the case of …

Trodusquemine enhances Aβ42 aggregation but suppresses its toxicity by displacing oligomers from cell membranes

R Limbocker, S Chia, FS Ruggeri, M Perni… - Nature …, 2019 - nature.com
Transient oligomeric species formed during the aggregation process of the 42-residue form
of the amyloid-β peptide (Aβ42) are key pathogenic agents in Alzheimer's disease (AD). To …

Powerful and interpretable behavioural features for quantitative phenotyping of Caenorhabditis elegans

A Javer, L Ripoll-Sánchez… - … Transactions of the …, 2018 - royalsocietypublishing.org
Behaviour is a sensitive and integrative readout of nervous system function and therefore an
attractive measure for assessing the effects of mutation or drug treatment on animals. Video …