Maurice Wilkins Centre special research seminar: The target of thalidomide, lenalidomide and pomalidomide is cereblon, a ubiquitin E3 ligase

Tuesday, 29 May 2012
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Location: At MAC 1 Seminar Room, Old Biology Building, 5 Symonds Street, Auckland

Speaker: Dr Jilly Evans, San Diego, California, USA
Department: Maurice Wilkins Centre

Thalidomide, lenalidomide and pomalidomide have shown remarkable efficacy in the treatment of multiple myeloma patients. Until 2010 the molecular target was unknown. A seminal paper by Ito and Handa et al in Science definitively showed that the teratogenic effects of thalidomide were mediated through the ubiquitin E3 ligase, cereblon. The question remained whether the beneficial effects of thalidomide and other immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs) including lenalidomide and pomalidomide, were mediated through cereblon. In the past year we have shown that these compounds do indeed interact specifically with cereblon and that their efficacy requires the presence of cereblon. This has opened up the potential to separate the teratogenicity from the efficacy of these drugs.