Wyss Institute Researchers Develop DNA Nanoswitch Platform for Faster Drug Discovery
Researchers at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, Boston Children's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School (HMS) have developed a new drug discovery platform called FIND (Functional Interaction-based Nanoswitch Discovery). This platform utilizes DNA nanoswitches to identify drug candidates that modulate binding interactions between two proteins, offering a significant advantage over conventional screening methods that primarily focus on binding to a single target protein. The FIND platform builds on earlier DNA nanoswitch technology developed by senior author Wesley Wong, Ph.D., and his team. It works by attaching a candidate drug molecule to each nanoswitch, which can switch between linear and looped shapes depending on protein-protein interactions. This allows for ultrahigh-throughput screening of large compound libraries, as demonstrated in a study published in Science, where FIND was used to discover small molecules and nanobodies that promote specific protein-protein interactions relevant to vari...
