Congratulations to PhD student Sarah Müller from Griffith University who published a paper as first author. 

The Glitazone Class of Drugs as Carbonic Anhydrase Inhibitors—A Spin-Off Discovery from Fragment Screening

Most of the drugs we know target the activity of specific proteins that play an important role in the disease being treated. One of the big challenges in the discovery of new drugs is finding molecules that bind specifically to one target and not bind to other proteins too. This is necessary to avoid causing treatment side effects. Hence, drug discovery researchers are always on the lookout for ways to find better lead molecules.
We identified an old drug class called glitazones that target a new protein known as carbonic anhydrase II, an enzyme that helps to maintain pH levels in cells. Carbonic anhydrase comes in many different forms and has been a successful target for drug development for various diseases like glaucoma, heart failure and epilepsy.
The glitazone drugs, such as rosiglitazone, are used to treat Type II diabetes. However, because of the severe side effects caused by the use of glitazones they were taken off the market. Our findings suggest that the unintended targeting of carbonic anhydrase may be one reason for the side effects of these drugs. This shows how important it is to carry out research to fully understand the effect of drugs and can help future researchers in drug discovery.

The paper was published in Molecules in May 2021.