A High Throughput Screen for Inhibitors of a Novel Necrotic Cell Death Pathway

Harvard Medical School, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The objective of this proposal is to isolate additional necrostatins for understanding the molecular mechanism of necroptosis. Apoptotic pathways have been studied extensively during the past decade. However, it has become increasingly clear that apoptosis is not the only cellular suicide mechanism. For example, in a subset of cell types, inhibition of caspases when cells are stimulated by FasL or TNFa lead to inhibition of apoptosis but cells die with necrotic morphology through a cellular process termed necroptosis. Necroptosis has been shown to be a promising target for the treatment of stroke with an extended time window. Necrostatins are small molecules that specifically inhibits necroptosis but not apoptosis. This application is to carry out a mechanistic study of necroptosis by utilizing unique chemical resources at NIH to generate small molecule affinity reagents for target identification, and to identify new necrostatins in order to meet the highly challenging goal of developing an anti-stroke drug. This project is to identify small molecule inhibitors of a novel cell death pathway, termed necroptosis. Necroptosis has been shown to be a promising target for the treatment of stroke as it represents a type of delayed cell death in stroke and offers an extended time window for therapy. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]