Researchers in the UC Irvine School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences’ Albrecht and Trader labs have developed a methylarginine targeting chimera tool (MrTAC), which was described in “Methylarginine targeting chimeras for lysosomal degradation of intracellular proteins,” published in Nature Chemical Biology.
The article was authored by a team of UCI researchers — Laurence J. Seabrook, Carolina N. Franco, Cody A. Loy, Jaida Osman, Callie Fredlender, Jan Zimak, Melissa Campos, Steven T. Nguyen, Samantha R. Levine, Marian F. Khalil, Darci J. Trader, and Lauren V. Albrecht — as well as the UCLA Department of Medicine’s Richard L. Watson and Kaelyn Sumigray of the Yale School of Medicine.
“MrTAC forces protein-protein interactions between a protein target and a methyltransferase enzyme,” explained Seabrook, a graduate student researcher in the Albrecht Lab and student in the UCI Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences’ Department of Developmental & Cell Biology. “We found that forcing these interactions can lead to arginine methylation of the target protein, which acts as a signal for protein breakdown in lysosomes. With MrTAC, we can completely eliminate disease-causing proteins in minutes, which offers a powerful new approach to facilitate both basic and translational research.”
Seabrook presented a poster on the MrTAC platform at the UC Drug Discovery Consortium Annual Symposium on September 16th. His poster was one of only two student presentations that were awarded at the University of California system-wide event. Dr. Albrecht spoke at the event as well, providing attendees with further information about the research and the process of developing MrTAC.
“Dr. Albrecht’s new protein degradation technology is a very exciting advancement to the field,” Dr. Trader stated. “Her MrTAC methodology will allow for the degradation of a new pool of proteins currently not amenable to current technology. I look forward to seeing how MrTAC methodology can be utilized in the long term for drug discovery.”
