Poster Presenter

Identification of peptide inhibitors for PKMz As Drug Candidates For Neuronal Disorders
Xuefeng Liu, Kurt Haas
Canada

Abnormal regulated synaptic transmission during early neural development is associated with various serious neurological diseases, such as epilepsy, autism and impaired cognitive development. Protein Kinase M zeta (PKMz), an endogenous constitutively active kinase associated with long term potentiation of synaptic transmission as well as learning and memory in the mature brain, is found to stabilize early neuronal growth and circuit formation, and therefore serves a drug target for diseases implicated with undesired overstabilization of neuronal growth and circuit formation, such as epilepsy. We have characterized an inhibitory peptide of PKMz that could promote the motility of neuronal growth, based on which we constructing a random mutated peptide library. The library will be screened for the most specific and potent product using protein kinase profiling and phospho-site profiling technology. Given important roles of PKMz in adult cognitive functions, this optimized peptide would also serve as a drug candidate for psychiatric disorders like addiction and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In addition, the described procedure could be adapted for a platform to develop peptide based drug candidates for other neurological diseases.