A medical scientist from the University of Cape Town (UCT), collaborating with a colleague from the United Kingdom, has made a breakthrough that will lead to more effective medicines for heart patients and people with high blood pressure.
UCT representative Shireen Cedres said on Friday that Dr Ed Sturrock of UCT and his collaborator, Professor Ravi Acharya of the University of Bath in the UK, determined the three-dimensional crystal structure of a substance called angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE).
ACE causes blood pressure to rise, and drugs called ACE inhibitors are widely used to bring blood pressure down.
However, current ACE inhibitors have some negative side effects, said Cedres. Also, ACE consists of two parts called the N and C domains, which have different functions. Current drugs inhibit both domains and thus are not always optimally effective.
Knowledge of the structure of the ACE molecule would enable researchers to develop inhibitors that act on only one domain. This would make the inhibitors safer and more effective.
Such inhibitors would now be developed in the laboratories at Bath and at UCT, said Cedres.
The details of the structure are available on the Nature journal’s website at www.nature.com/nature. The print version of the magazine is to be published next Thursday. ‒ Sapa