Engineering methionine gamma lyase for anticancer therapy.

The project is aimed at the engineering and delivery of the PLP-dependent methionine gamma-lyase enzyme as a antitumor drug. The enzyme degrades methionine and for this reason it has shown to have cytotoxic activity against several tumor cell lines strongly dependent on methionine. The enzyme has been genetically engineered with saturation mutagenesis in order to increase its activity. Moreover, it has been chemically modified to reduce immunogenicity and degradation at systemic level by pegilation or encapsulation in polymeric material of different nature (silica gel, alginates, PlLGA).

Members:
Patrizia Cioni
Serena Faggiano
Andrea Mozzarelli (Principal investigator)