Drug discovery targeting membrane transport proteins

抄録

Membrane is one of the most important apparatus for living cells. Every single external matter, include mechanical stimuli, goes through the membrane. However, membrane proteins are generally tough targets to study although there is the strong demand for medicine. Here, I present one of the examples how to conduct basic and translational research of membrane transporters. Nutrient transporters play the role to allow selective permeation of nutrients. In cancer cells, nutrient transporters are constitutively upregulated to facilitate the uptake for robust cell growth. Among them, LAT1 (SLC7A5) is known as a cancer-specific amino acid transporter. LAT1 transports most of essential amino acids include leucine, a signal for cell growth via mTORC1. Thus, LAT1 has been considered as an attractive target for cancer diagnose and treatment. By using multi-disciplinary approaches from biochemistry, pharmacology and proteomics, we have been studying LAT1 and developed several of small compounds for cancer imaging or anti-cancer.