Seoul (AsiaNews) A US research team headed by a Korean scientist has found enzymatic activities that cause neuropsychosis, opening the way for treatment of diseases such as depression and Parkinson's.
Lee Min-gyu, researcher at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, announced that his team discovered that an enzyme called "BHC110" combines with certain protein complexes and represses the expression of genes related to nerves.
Various mental illnesses related to cerebral nerves are known to occur when BHC110 represses gene expression too much or too little.
"We found a concrete principle of BHC110's activities in human cells. In the future, we will be able to fundamentally treat incurable diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, by developing drugs that activate or deactivate the enzyme," Lee said.
"Finding out the exact correlation between genes and diseases is one of the major questions to be solved for the development of medicinal cures," he added.
The results were released last month on the Web site of Nature, a world-renowned science journal.
Lee, who majored in agricultural chemistry at Seoul National University, obtained a doctorate in biological chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. He has been working at the Wistar Institute as a post-doctoral student for gene expression and regulation programme since last year.