Bellbrook Labs, LLC — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Epigenetic regulation of gene expression via methylat

Description

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Epigenetic regulation of gene expression via methylation has been implicated in diverse diseases including cancer, diabetes and inflammation, and high throughput screening for histone methyltransferase (HMT) inhibitorsis an area of intense drug discovery effort. However, there are significant shortcomings with existing HMT enzyme assay methods, and these are slowing exploration of the therapeutic potential of these emerging targets. Detection of specific methylation events can be quite complicated, and detection of S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH), the invariant product of all HMT reactions, would be preferred in most cases. However, HMTs are very poor catalysts and many have very low SAM requirements - a combination of factors that creates very stringent sensitivity requirements for SAH-based assay methods. Moreover, direct detection of SAH is a very challenging molecular recognition problem as it requires a reagent capable of discriminating between SAH and S- adenosylm