Word: mglur5
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Scientists have suspected that FRMP exerts its braking action by attaching to receptors on the surface of brain cells, known as mGluR5 receptors (the Glu is for glutamate, a key signaling agent in the brain). They reasoned that it would be possible to correct the excesses of Fragile X by blocking these receptors, which act as accelerators of protein production. To test this idea, the researchers produced a special breed of mice that had the Fragile X trait but only half the normal number of mGluR5 receptors. The result, explains Bear: "We were able to correct the excesses [of Fragile...
...intervention reversed Fragile X symptoms. The specially bred mice had fewer seizures, more normal brain structure, a more typical rate of body growth and they performed better on a learning task than mice with uncorrected Fragile X. The experiment suggests that treating Fragile X with a drug that inhibits mGluR5 receptors could have similarly healing effects...
...This gives the whole field of autism a lot of hope for targeted treatments that can be beneficial," says Dr. Randi Hagerman, medical director of the MIND Institute and director of the Fragile X Research and Treatment Center at the University of California, Davis. "It's likely that the mGluR5 pathway may be involved in other kinds of autism," she says. That means that a drug that works on this pathway could have broad application in treating autism...
...happens, drugs that block the mGluR5 receptor already exist. Hagerman's group and a team at Rush University in Chicago are about to test one such drug, fenobam, as a treatment for Fragile X. Bear, meanwhile, has founded a company called Seaside Therapeutics that hopes to begin human safety tests of another drug as early as next year. Both researchers believe that a safe and effective mGluR5 inhibitor would help both children and adults with Fragile X Syndrome, though drug treatment early in childhood would seem to offer the most promise...
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