Pharma Looks to Inflammasome Inhibitors as All-Around Therapies

Many major biopharmaceutical companies are developing or acquiring drugs that target the NLRP3 inflammasome, a large intracellular complex that researchers say can spark inflammation and stoke diseases of lifestyle and aging.

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ABOVE: Once activated, the NLRP3 inflammasome (illustrated) triggers a suite of pathways that may play an important role in many different diseases.
ARTWORK REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION FROM PROFESSOR KATE SCHRODER, THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

Every morning of his life, no matter what he did, a young British man woke up with a fever, a headache, a rash on his trunk and limbs, joint pain, and ever-worsening deafness. His doctors had diagnosed him with a rare illness called Muckle-Wells syndrome, in which chronic inflammation rages out of control; no treatment had been able to cure his symptoms.

Then, in 2001, researchers in California discovered the genetic explanation for his disease: a mutation in a gene called CIAS1 (since renamed NALP3 and then NLRP3), which was later found to cause the resulting protein to be constantly activated. Around the same time, a group of scientists at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland found ...

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Meet the Author

  • Rachael Moeller Gorman

    Rachael freelances for both scientific and lay publications, and loves telling the stories behind the science.

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