A new technique that targets proteins that cause disease and destroys pathological proteins in the cell has been developed by researchers at the University of British Columbia’s Brain Research Centre, part of the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. Researchers suggest that the findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, have important implications for diseases including Alzheimer disease, Huntington disease, stroke, and even cancers.

The researchers used the new technique to disable protein function temporarily in select brain regions affected by disease. Directly targeting specific proteins in a cell is important, because many disease-causing proteins have normal functions in the cell. They become harmful only during certain disease processes. In a stroke, for example, the body activates a protein, DAPK1, which damages or kills neurons in the affected brain area. However, in its normal form and outside the affected brain area, DAPK1 has a positive function—clearing the body of cell mutations and inhibiting the abnormal cell growth found in cancer. Targeting is critical because permanently disabling DAPK1 outside of the affected brain area could have many adverse effects.

Dr Wang, professor of neurology at UBC, and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of BC & Yukon chair in stroke research, anticipates that the revolutionary technique has broad applications.