The drug is now undergoing regulatory approval. The structure based design approach is being taken to develop drugs to combat other infections and diseases. The research is currently causing great excitement in medical circles. At the moment diabetes has to be treated with a complicated regime of diet and insulin injections. Insulin is destroyed by the body's digestive juices if it is taken by mouth.
Receptors are vital links in the body's command chain.
Messenger chemicals like hormones and growth factors attach and switch on their special receptor, which in turns commands the cell to perform particular tasks, such as to grow or to process sugar. The team is the first in the world to clarify the structure of half of the IGF receptor, marking a major scientific milestone in a field of research that has been running since the late 1960s when the 3D structure of insulin was determined. The research was reported in Nature in July this year. So this discovery has major implications for our understanding of the mechanisms behind growth and development, including some forms of cancer and diseases such as diabetes. The team's final aim is to use their structural knowledge to develop a receptor for diabetes and an inhibitor for cancer, both of which would be great breakthroughs in international medical science.