Patent ID: 7666587

Claim:
A method of screening a compound for potential effectiveness in treating a mammalian disease mediated by plasma cells, said method comprising: providing a test compound; providing an assay system suitable for evaluating the test compound's ability to inhibit processing of unspliced X-Box binding protein 1 (XBP-1) mRNA to spliced XBP-1 mRNA, said assay system comprising: unspliced XBP-1 mRNA; IRE1 protein; and a system suitable to splice unspliced XBP-1 mRNA; contacting the test compound with the assay system and providing a stimulus effective to activate processing of unspliced XBP-1 mRNA to spliced XBP-1 mRNA with IRE1 present; evaluating, with the assay system, the test compound's ability to inhibit IRE1-mediated processing of unspliced XBP-1 mRNA to spliced XBP-1 mRNA by IRE1 by detecting whether unspliced XBP-1 mRNA and spliced XBP-1 mRNA are present in the assay system with and without the test compound; and identifying test compounds which reduce spliced XBP-1 mRNA and increase unspliced XBP-1 mRNA as having potential effectiveness in treating a mammalian disease mediated by plasma cells.