Feb. 27, 2006 Gold compounds have been used for the treatment of
rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases for more than
75 years, but until now, how the metals work has been a mystery.
Harvard Medical School researchers report in the Feb. 27 issue
of Nature Chemical Biology that special forms of gold, platinum,
and other classes of medicinal metals work by stripping bacteria
and virus particles from the grasp of a key immune system
protein. "We were searching for a new drug to treat autoimmune
diseases," says Brian DeDecker, PhD, HMS post-doctoral student
in the Department of Cell Biology and a study co-author. At the
time of this work, DeDecker was in the Harvard Medical School
Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology, which uses powerful
chemical tools to illuminate complex biological processes and
provide new leads for drug development. "But instead we
discovered a biochemical mechanism that may help explain how an
old drug works." DeDecker and co-author Stephen De Wall, PhD,
undertook a large-sca