Publications by authors named "K Aertgeerts"

Introduction: There is a high unmet need for safe and effective non-opioid medicines to treat moderate to severe pain without risk of addiction. Voltage-gated sodium channel 1.8 (Na1.

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Overexpression of biologically functional GPCRs and homogeneous purified protein solutions are required to enable structural studies and protein-based biophysical assay development. Iterative and time-consuming optimization cycles of protein engineering, expression, and purification are often needed to achieve the desired protein quantity and quality. Here, we describe the reconstitution of GPCRs in virus-like particles (VLPs) and their use in biophysical assays to characterize protein yield, stability, and small molecule ligand binding.

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Inhibition of phosphodiesterase 2A (PDE2A) has been proposed as a potential approach to enhance cognitive functioning and memory through boosting intracellular cGMP/cAMP and enhancing neuroplasticity in memory-related neural circuitry. Previous preclinical studies demonstrated that PDE2A inhibitors could reverse -methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist (5S,10R)-(+)-5-methyl-10,11-dihydro-5-dibenzo[,]cyclohepten-5,10-imine or ketamine-induced memory deficit. Here, we report that the potent and selective PDE2A inhibitor 4-(1-azetidinyl)-7-methyl-5-[1-methyl-5-[5-(trifluoromethyl)-2-pyridinyl]-1-pyrazol-4-yl]-imidazo[5,1-][1,2,4]triazine (PF-05180999) enhances long-term memory in a contextual fear conditioning model in the rat at the oral dose of 0.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Prior research showed nonadditive SAR when these assumptions were not met, especially due to local protein changes from ligand binding.
  • * For the first time, this research provides structural evidence that ligand binding creates a hydrophobic pocket in PDE2's catalytic site, reducing another subpocket and causing significant nonadditive effects between distant R groups.
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Galanin Receptor 3 (GALR3) is a G-protein-coupled receptor with a widespread distribution in the brain and plays a role in a variety of physiologic processes including cognition/memory, sensory/pain processing, hormone secretion, and feeding behavior. Therefore, GALR3 is considered an attractive CNS drug target (Freimann et al., 2015) [1].

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