Chemical Methods to Knock Down the Amyloid Proteins

Abstract

Amyloid proteins are closely related with amyloid diseases and do tremendous harm to human health. However, there is still a lack of effective strategies to treat these amyloid diseases, so it is important to develop novel methods. Accelerating the clearance of amyloid proteins is a favorable method for amyloid disease treatment. Recently, chemical methods for protein reduction have been developed and have attracted much attention. In this review, we focus on the latest progress of chemical methods that knock down amyloid proteins, including the proteolysis-targeting chimera (PROTAC) strategy, the "recognition-cleavage" strategy, the chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) strategy, the selectively light-activatable organic and inorganic molecules strategy and other chemical strategies.

Keywords: amyloid proteins; chemical methods; degradation.

Figure 1

Proteolysis-targeting chimera (PROTAC) strategy degrades the target protein by the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS).

Figure 2

(A) Schematic diagram of “recognition-cleavage” strategy; (B) The structure of cyclen chelating Cu(II).

Figure 3

Schematic diagram of the chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) strategy.

Figure 4

Schematic diagram of the selectively light-activatable organic and inorganic molecules strategy.