Technologies

Background

Autophagy, the degradation and recycling of cellular components in the human body, is a natural and essential process for maintaining homeostasis, especially in times of cellular stress. A number of drugs in the clinical trials against cancers, immune diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases affect or act through autophagy. Although autophagy is entering clinical trials, methods of monitoring whether drugs modulate autophagy in patients during treatment are not currently available and are desperately needed. Exploring the molecular mechanisms of autophagy further provides an opportunity for development of novel drugs to treat devastating diseases.

The current method of measuring autophagy by monitoring LC3 conversion to LC3 (LC3-PE), which requires running western blots and measuring amounts of gel-shifted (change in electrophoretic mobility) LC3 band, are labor intensive and difficult to interpret. In addition, these classical methods have only been suitable in research settings. There exists a current need for new methods of measuring autophagy that can be used in clinical settings and provide rapid and accurate measurements of autophagy levels.

Technology Description

Researchers at the University of New Mexico have developed a method of measuring the effect of drugs on autophagy that can be used in a clinical setting. Unlike current methods, this technique does not require intensive labor and results are easy to interpret by providing a straightforward measurement of LC3-II and thus autophagy levels.

About STC.UNM

As the technology-transfer and economic-development organization for the University of New Mexico, STC.UNM protects and commercializes technologies developed at the University of New Mexico (UNM) by filing patents and copyrights and transferring the technologies to the marketplace. We connect the business communication (companies, entrepreneurs and investors) to these UNM technologies for licensing opportunities and the creation of startup companies. Visit www.stc.unm.edu.