Development of the technology for de novo creation of recombinant biological long-acting antidotes for the treatment of disorders of the nervous system

As therapeutic drugs, antibodies have a number of advantages, such as low immunogenicity, high stability in the blood stream and the ability to administer large doses of the drug without significant side effects. Because of this, after the vaccines in the pharmaceutical market the overall antibodies production takes second place. At the present time there are 40 clinical accepted antibody drugs. Creating of a hybrid antibody with an integrated active site of an enzyme that is capable to degrade or neutralize the organophosphate neurotoxins is a unique fundamental problem, that have an obvious applications and that will allow to come close to the problem of "the catalytic vaccine." Necessary of antidotes neutralizing organophosphorus toxins (OPT) goes from increasing uncontrolled usage of pesticides, the danger of industrial disaster and a high probability of terrorist attacks. Up to 10% of all household poisonings comes from poisoning with household insecticides, mosquito drugs. Over the past 60 years, methods of medical treatment of poisoning by organophosphorus toxins are actively developed. Nevertheless, they are still imperfect, because they avoids the death, but not disability and irreversible brain damage. Usage of biological antidotes is an alternative approach to the treatment and prevention of the poisoning aith OPT. In 2006 human plasma butyrylcholinesterase received the status of «New development drug» from the Office of Food Inspection and Drug Administration (FDA). The amyloid hypothesis postulated that extracellular amyloid beta deposits are the fundamental cause of the Alzheimer's disease. In Alzheimer's disease, acetylcholinesterase and butyrylcholinesterase, but especially butyrylcholinesterase, identifies in the amyloid beta plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. There is every reason to believe that reduced activity of these enzymes will be beneficial for the development of the pathological process. Apparently, in the Alzheimer's disease butyrylcholinesterase is the better target for inhibition than acetylcholinesterase. Evidently, that it is necessary to obtain stable and non-toxic enzyme inhibitors acting in vivo. The main idea of this project is to create approaches to the regulation of the in vivo activity of cholinesterases. On the one hand, increased activity of this biocatalysts in the human body allows to protect the individual from organophosphorus agents, chemical warfare agents, pesticides and insecticides, but from the other hand the functional inhibition of the activity of these enzymes may be warranted in the treatment of a number of serious the nervous system disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease. Proposed platform will be based on the specific pharmaceutical products: (i) the biocatalyst with altered kinetic parameters, allowing to accept and/or transform neurotoxic organophosphorus toxins (OPT) and (ii) a cholinesterase inhibitor, obtained by the combinatorial biology approaches based on natural proteases inhibitors - serpins. Project requires drugs creating based on recombinant proteins with prolonged circulation time in the bloodstream. In this regard, one of the conditions for the successful implementation of the project will be experiments on animals, particularly spf staus mice line with medium-level of butyrylcholinesterase and with butyrylcholinesterase knockout mice.

January 6, 2016 — December 31, 2018

Smirnov I.V. (PI)

Laboratory of proteolytic enzyme chemistry

Grant, RSF

List of publications

  1. Palikov VA, Terekhov SS, Palikova YA, Khokhlova ON, Kazakov VA, Dyachenko IA, Panteleev SV, Mokrushina YA, Knorre VD, Shamborant OG, Smirnov IV, Gabibov AG (2018). Mouse Model for Assessing the Subchronic Toxicity of Organophosphate Pesticides. Acta Naturae 10 (4), 125–128