The researchers, led by Iowa State University Associate Professor Reuben Peters, said their findings might someday lead to a cure for tuberculosis. The disease, caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis microbe, kills 1.5 million to 2 million people worldwide annually.
Peters, along with scientists from the University of Illinois and Cornell University, said in most infections, the human body defends itself with macrophage cells that engulf and destroy the foreign microbes, such as the Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Peters and his colleagues found the mycobacterium tuberculosis produces a defensive molecule that prevents the macrophage cells from destroying the TB bacteria. He and his team named that defensive molecule edaxadiene.
Peters' next step was to try to find molecules that neutralize the edaxadiene-producing enzymes.
"We have inhibitors that bind tightly to one of the enzymes that make edaxadiene in a test tube," said Peters. But he said finding an inhibitor that works outside of the test tube, and in humans, and is stable, and can be ingested safely by humans, and can help kill tuberculosis is a process that may take a decade.
The group's research appeared in the Aug. 28 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and the study is to be the cover article of an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International.
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