Sugar May Be Used to Improve Drug Efficiency

According to the results of a new scientific study, it would appear that using sugars to boost the efficiency of drugs is an under-explored field of science that should get more attention. The simple chemical has the ability to either augment or stop the actions of medication, experts say.

The new work was conducted by investigators with the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM) School of Medicine. The team got its inspiration from observing that the surfaces of cells and other biologically-active molecules are covered in sugar-based structures.

Interestingly, these sugars are not used to store energy (which is their standard use in the body), but rather to regulate processes such as immunity, communication and inflammation. This made scientists think that the molecules may also come in handy during drug delivery.

UWM professor of pharmaceutical sciences Jon Thorson – who is an expert in understanding how sugars attach themselves to, and function on, molecules – believes that the field of pharmaceutical research is on the verge of a major breakthrough thanks to this discovery.

“The chemistry of these sugars is difficult, so we have been working on methods to make it more user friendly,” the investigator says in a paper published in the August 21 online issue of the top scientific journal Nature Chemical Biology.

He conducted the new investigation with colleagues Richard Gantt, a graduate student, and Pauline Peltier-Pain, a postdoctoral fellow at the university. Together, they developed a method for removing sugar molecules from carrier molecules.

The sugars can then be easily added to existing drugs, or a wide variety of other chemicals. Interestingly, the molecules that are able to accept the sugar change colors, which provides the team with a feedback mechanism that lets them know when the procedure completed successfully.

“One can put 1,000 drug varieties on a plate and tell by color how many of them have received the added sugar,” Thorson explains. The finding is very important for scientists working on developing new drugs against a range of diseases.

“There are transporters in the body that specifically recognize certain sugars, and pharmaceutical companies have taken advantage of this to direct molecules toward specific tissue or cell types,” the expert goes on to say.

“If we can build a toolbox that allows us to make these molecules on demand, we can ask, 'What will sugar A do when it's attached to drug B'?” he concludes.