Specific Inhibitors Can Cure Tuberculosis

TB bacteria have a complex mechanism of survival in infected human cells. Scientists from the University of Wail Cornell and Rockefeller University have found a substance that opposes this mechanism.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, getting into the body, supervises the work of the immune system. Nitric oxide produced by cells capable of destroying bacteria in its accumulation in them. However, the bacteria are able to get rid of harmful proteins by proteasomes (for complex breakdown of proteins). Drugs aimed at the destruction of the proteasome, were able to defeat tuberculosis. But it is known that human cells also have an important set of proteasomes. Thus, the drugs should only be directed against bacterial complexes.

The researchers analyzed more than 20,000 substances that inhibit the work of proteasome tuberculosis bacteria. They have synthesized a group of inhibitors and tested them on the epithelial cells and cells of the immune system. It emphasized two substances that block the ability to inhibit proteasome proteins, altering the form of special pockets in which proteins accumulate.