Researchers identify an unexpected effect for already characterized active substances
Every innovative drug starts with the search for an active substance targeting key players in disease-related processes. However, there is no perfect drug that affects the one target in the body: no effect without side effects, as also described in most medicine information leaflets. A group of chemists and biologists led by Prof. Herbert Waldmann and Dr. Slava Ziegler at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund have now combined different strategies to find bioactive molecules and identified an unexpected effect for a group of already characterized active substances: they all modulate cholesterol metabolism, a home-made problem, as it seems.