Tiny interactions within cells may point toward better medications

To improve medications for diseases, Nathaniel Nucci, Ph.D. wants to know how life works at its smallest level-the molecule.

With support from the National Science Foundation, Nucci and his students at Rowan University's College of Science & Mathematics are focused on learning more about molecular recognition or "the way that two molecules in an ocean of other molecules find and bind to each other in a specific way."

"In science, we know a lot about the structures of biological molecules," says Nucci, an associate professor in the departments of Biological & Biomedical Sciences and Physics & Astronomy. "We don't know a lot about how they move and how their structures change both with time and with different kinds of conditions …I like to live at that sort of frontier of what we understand and what we don't understand."

By understanding how biology and physics principles, like thermodynamics, operate inside of our cells, scientists can experiment with specific interactions to create new medicines to treat disease and pain. The main focus is on discovery in the emerging field of allosteric drugs. In general, treatment with allosteric drugs may be potentially more effective with fewer adverse side effects when compared with conventional drugs.

"Allosteric drugs are drugs that bind to proteins in different ways than natural molecules," Nucci says. "The way I describe it to my students is that typical kinds of drugs turn proteins on and off. Allosteric drugs are capable of turning proteins up or down. So they provide an opportunity for more fine-tuned control of biochemical processes."

Given the complexity of such work, Nucci collaborates with other experts at Rowan, the Stanford University School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Milan.

"We are trying to reveal things about the nature of molecular recognition with a long-term idea of making better models and better techniques for manipulating those interactions," Nucci said. "That's what medicine is. Medicine is manipulating those interactions. So, to do a better job of that in the long run, we need to understand the problem better."

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