Russia is developing drugs that control the death of diseased cells

NOVOSIBIRSK, August 5Russian scientists are conducting preclinical trials of the latest drugs that program cell death, which is associated with many human diseases, Inna Lavrik, chief researcher at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ICG SB RAS), professor at the Otto von Guericke University (Magdeburg, Germany), told reporters on Monday.
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"We are engaged in programmed cell death. This is a process that is simply necessary for our body. We are talking, and in this second about a million of our cells have died… In fact, this is wonderful, because for the normal functioning of our body, all damaged cells must die. The cells themselves completely destroy themselves… Each cell has its own set of proteins that act as a kind of samurai sword," she said on the sidelines of the 14th international conference "Bioinformatics of regulation and structure of genomes/systems biology", BGRSSB-2024).

Lavrik explained that most human diseases are associated with cell death. All diseases, she said, can be characterized as «a lot of cell death» (e.g. neurodegenerative diseases) or «very little cell death» (e.g. cancer). In this regard, drugs should either accelerate cell death or slow it down.

«We have already created prototypes of drugs using a comprehensive approach and are starting to work with cells from patients, but we are still at the preclinical stage… On the one hand, we are targeting oncological diseases by accelerating cell death, and on the other hand, we are also trying to defeat neurodegenerative diseases by inhibiting and generally programmed cell death. We hope that, given all the difficulties that currently exist with funding, we will still reach the clinic in the next year or two,» the researcher said.

According to Lavrik, her research team is a recognized leader in this area and hopes to obtain the world's first such drugs.

«We first build a mathematical model of the systemic pathway of cell death, select the most important protein, then take this protein and design a drug against this most important protein. Artificial intelligence helps us design these drugs… Thus, we create our drugs using systems biology and artificial intelligence… The innovation lies in the interdisciplinary approach that we use. And, of course, we have advanced methods of experimental science,» she noted.
Scientists hope that the drugs being developed to accelerate or slow down cell death will help to significantly extend human life in many diseases that are currently considered incurable.