People need just the right balance of copper to thrive, but for some people copper deficiency is a big problem and can even be fatal. A new breakthrough looks like helping.
Copper is an essential nutrient which most healthy people get from foods like nuts, meats and fish. Some rare genetic disorders like Menkes disease however, means the body is unable to absorb copper.
Too little copper compromises our cells’ ability to make energy, transport iron and perform other life-supporting functions. Too much though can be toxic. A new USA study suggests that a promising drug called “elesclomol” could open up the possibility of treating copper deficiency in future.
“Right now, there is no effective drug for copper deficiency diseases,” said Mohammad Zulkifli, a research scientist at Texas A&M University who was part of the new study and lead author on the recently published paper on it in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or PNAS.
“We know elesclomol binds with copper very tightly outside the cell, but we did not know how copper is released from the drug once inside the cell until now.”
The new study found that a protein called ferredoxin 1 (FDX1) offers the key to unlock the copper from elesclomol. The protein resides inside mitochondria, which are the energy-generating powerhouses of human cells.
Zulkifli added, “what releases copper outside the mitochondria? We do not know. So we’ll be focusing on what is causing that release in future work.”