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Designer protein delivers signal of choice

A computational strategy has delivered a redesigned, more stable version of a cytokine protein that mimics the natural protein’s interactions with receptors, opening the way for designer cytokine-based therapeutics.
  1. E. Yvonne Jones

    1. E. Yvonne Jones is in the Division of Structural Biology, Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7BN, UK.

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Messenger proteins called cytokines are secreted from cells and travel throughout the body. In the immune system, a cytokine called interleukin-2 (IL-2) delivers signals to receptors that regulate the activities of white blood cells. Cytokines such as IL-2 could therefore be used as therapeutics to modulate the strength of immune responses. However, the clinical uses of cytokines are often severely limited by properties that are inherent in their structures. Writing in Nature, Silva et al.1 describe how they have engineered a protein structure from scratch to replicate the beneficial receptor-binding properties of IL-2 without the drawbacks of the original cytokine.

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Nature 565, 165-166 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07883-z

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