New discovered the gene that regulates the balance of "bad" cholesterol

In an article in Science, Noam Zelcer the LACDR described an unprecedented mechanism for the settlement of the amount of LDL cholesterol. This offers opportunities to supplement and improve the impact of so-called statins: drugs, delete "bad" cholesterol in the blood.

Cholesterol is not soluble in water. As regards the carriage by the blood, so blood fat, called lipoproteins, along with other fats. The two most famous are known as HDL (high density lipoprotein) or "good" cholesterol and LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein) or "bad" cholesterol. Too much LDL in the blood can help improve the development of cardiovascular disease.

A group of substances, called statins, is often used as a drug to reduce LDL in the blood. For this, on the one hand, blocks the production of cholesterol and the other by increasing the number of LDL receptors, the liver cells. This allows the cells to more than LDL in blood, so that the blood is considered "clean." Statins are currently the best-selling medicines. But they are not perfect.

The development of statins on the cells of the natural regulatory mechanisms to balance cholesterol. All cells are able to do to eliminate or cholesterol. And all cells for the treatment of cholesterol with care: too much cholesterol in the cell is toxic, but too little is not good. Cholesterol is for these purposes as the membranes. The cells can "sense" the amount of cholesterol and adjust the height of the pump it, if it too. If you want to get cholesterol from the outside, on the level of LDL receptors. This receptor binds to "free" LDL and in the cell, where the fat is Globule in its various components, including cholesterol se.

Noam Zelcer, now part of the Leiden / Amsterdam Center for Drug Research (LACDR), with Peter Tontonoz and other former colleagues from the University of California at Los Angeles, has an unknown mechanism, which states, like cells to regulate cholesterol. On the website of the journal Science (Science Express on 11 June), it describes a mechanism of influence on the number of LDL receptors.

If IDOL is active in the cell, the number and positioning of LDL receptors is changing dramatically.

Zelcer identified a gene that affects the distribution of these receptors. "This gene functions as a traffic controller," he says. "Whenever there is too much cholesterol in the cell, it sends the LDL receptors to lysosomes, the center of the waste cell. They are there, so that the cell absorbs less cholesterol, and balance is restored."

Zelcer cell name of the idol for the inducible LDLR decreases. The cell to repair the inner balance. But the same mechanism of movement, of calls, the balance could also be a factor preventing statins optimal effect in the LDL in the blood by the cells. Zelcer: "There are signs that this could be the case, we have studied what happens if you put the idol." Raised receptors at what you could do with success, both in mouse cells and human cells in vitro. Once the researchers inactivated idol, or reduce the amount, the LDL-receptor has increased, so that the cell could, for LDL-cholesterol. Zelcer now is whether the search IDOL influence could lead to a further decrease cholesterol levels of therapy, complements the work of statins.