UT Southwestern researchers make key cholesterol discovery

by PegNews wire

So, the way I understand it, what a person wants to have going for him or her in order to maintain a healthy cholesterol balance in his or her bloodstream (and thus avoid such nasty things as heart disease) is a minimal amount of "bad cholesterol," known in medical circles as low-density lipoproteins, or LDL.

One of the ways that a healthy human bloodstream deals with bad cholesterol (and by "deals," I mean "takes out with extreme prejudice") is by allowing its LDL receptors (aka LDLR) to do their thing by binding with the nasty LDLs and thence removing them from the playing field (i.e., bloodstream).

Enter a destructive protein known as PCSK9, which - for purposes of this writeup - we'll call "George" (because I think "George" rolls off the tongue easier than PCSK9). George is bad - BAD, I'm telling you. George is bad because George has a tendency to bind with the happy-go-lucky LDLR molecules before they can get to their designated targets, those nasty LDLs.

How to address? Taking their cue from eco-engineers such as those who introduced kudzu to the deep South in order to control lily pads (O.K., I'm pretty much making this up as I go along), the University of Texas Southwestern medical researcher dudes led by Dr. Jay Horton hope to design "targeted antibodies" that will disrupt the binding between the George and LDLR molecules.

Let's just hope the targeted antibodies Dr. Horton and his fellow researchers end up designing (and introducing into our bloodstreams) don't take over like kudzu, or we'll end up with a society populated mostly by Swamp Things.

posted by JM