Light-responsive chemical reagents delivering high-precision control of cytoskeleton-dependent cellular functions
Oliver Thorn-Seshold
Department of Pharmacy, Centre for Drug Research
Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich [http://www.cup.lmu.de/]
Small molecule inhibitors that modulate protein function have driven much of the progress in both biology and medicine over the last 100 years. However, the cytoskeleton is particularly challenging to study or leverage using classical inhibitors, since it fulfils a multitude of spatiotemporally distinct functions that classical cytoskeleton inhibitors cannot individually address.
Photopharmaceuticals are light-responsive synthetic chemical reagents, which can leverage the precision of standard imaging or light delivery methods to achieve high spatiotemporal specificity of protein control. As exogenous reagents, photopharmaceuticals can be used to modulate survival-critical proteins for which other methods (such as genetic engineering) are difficult to apply, and they have the potential to be translated quickly between model organisms and even used therapeutically. They have been developed extensively for neuroscience applications especially addressing ion channels and GPCRs with temporally precise patterning of inhibitory activity. We are working on photopharmaceuticals to allow spatially precise modulation of the cytoskeleton, primarily of microtubule structure and dynamics. This talk will outline some of the progress in creating cytoskeleton photopharmacology tools, and the opportunities to apply them to basic biology and neuroscience.