Research reveals the target and molecular mechanism of the drug metformin

Recently, the team of Pu Hailong, a researcher of the Biomolecular Function and Mechanism Research Group of the Key Laboratory of Separation and Analytical Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, cooperated with the team of Lin Shengcai/Professor Deng Xianming, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor of Xiamen University, to identify the direct effect of metformin.

Metformin, a first-line drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, can reduce body weight, alleviate fatty liver in diabetics, and has been found to potentially fight various cancers caused by diabetes

In this work, by synthesizing a chemical probe of metformin, researchers "fished" out a variety of proteins that may be bound to metformin from cells, and through a large number of subsequent molecular biology experiments, finally found a protein called PEN2, Can mediate the activation of AMPK by metformin

In recent years, Park Hailong's team and Lin Shengcai's team have made a series of achievements focusing on the cell's perception mechanism of nutrients and energy and the metabolic disorder mechanism of related diseases.

The related research results were published in Nature under the title of Low-dose metformin targets the lysosome–AMPK pathway through PEN2

Research reveals the target and molecular mechanism of the drug metformin