A current study in Science from the Tokyo Institute of Technology seems to demonstrate how Thalidomide causes birth defects. Here's the abstract from the paper:
Half a century ago, thalidomide was widely prescribed to pregnant women as a sedative but was found to be teratogenic, causing multiple birth defects. Today, thalidomide is still used in the treatment of leprosy and multiple myeloma, although how it causes limb malformation and other developmental defects is unknown. Here, we identified cereblon (CRBN) as a thalidomide-binding protein. CRBN forms an E3 ubiquitin ligase complex with damaged DNA binding protein 1 (DDB1) and Cul4A that is important for limb outgrowth and expression of the fibroblast growth factor Fgf8 in zebrafish and chicks. Thalidomide initiates its teratogenic effects by binding to CRBN and inhibiting the associated ubiquitin ligase activity. This study reveals a basis for thalidomide teratogenicity and may contribute to the development of new thalidomide derivatives without teratogenic activity.
Source:
Ito et al 2010. Identification of a Primary Target of Thalidomide Teratogenicity. Science. Vol. 327. no. 5971, pp. 1345 - 1350. Link
- Log in to post comments
More like this
You can always tell it's Nobel season -- because that's when the Ig Nobel prizes are announced!
The 2010 laureates have been announced. Here are some "highlights:"
ENGINEERING PRIZE: Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin of the Zoological Society of London, UK, and Diane Gendron of…
What does Sonic Hedgehog on the left have to do with whale evolution? Nothing. However a soon-to-be-published study will argue that the gene Sonic Hedgehog (Shh) played a part. The abstract reads:
Among mammals, modern cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) are unusual in the absence of hind…
Neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's, were for many years regarded as exclusively diseases of molecular crud. You would look at brains of patients with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients and notice that there were all these aggregates of protein crud forming in specific locations.…
The story of thalidomide, the notorious teratogenic drug developed in Germany and sold around the world from 1957 to 1961 as a treatment for morning sickness, continues to unfold. By now most are familiar with thalidomide's history, how it caused phocomelia and other severe birth defects in over…
Maybe. But thalidomide interferes with NO signaling too.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19912234
I suspect that is how thalidomide causes autism in a very narrow time window.
Birth defects occur during fetal development. Most of them appear in the first trimester and alter the aspect and the functionality of the body. Various organs are affected( brain and head malformations, heart, lungs, liver, digestive system) and also bones.