NEWS OF THE WEEK
CANDIDATES NAMED FOR ACS ELECTION VOTE: American Chemical Society
president-elect and four board director slots are open
C COURTESY OF ALLISON CAMPBELL
COURTESY OF BRYAN BALAZS
President-elect candidates G. Bryan Balazs (left) and Allison A. Campbell.
ANDIDATES for American Chemical Society
2016 president-elect and four additional openings on the ACS Board of Directors have been announced for the society’s fall election. The new president-elect will serve in ACS’s three-year presidential succession, and those elected to director seats will serve three-year terms starting in 2016. The candidates for president-elect are G. Bryan Balazs, an associate program leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Livermore, Calif., and Allison A. Campbell, an associate laboratory director at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in Richland, Wash. Competing for a term as District I director are incum-
NEW TARGET FOR RETT SYNDROME DRUG DEVELOPMENT: Inhibiting
phosphatase improves disease symptoms in mice
S
CIENTISTS HAVE IDENTIFIED an enzyme
that could serve as a possible drug target to treat Rett syndrome, an autismlike neurological disorder. Inhibiting the enzyme, called protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B), improved disease symptoms in mice, the researchers Br found. F F O– Rett syndrome is caused by mutaP tions in a gene that codes for methylOH O CpG-binding protein 2 (MECP2). This O protein regulates the expression of H S N many other genes in cells, and this large N H3C CH3 web of affected pathways downstream of O H O MECP2 has frustrated scientists looking for possible drug targets. CPT157633 But Nicholas K. Tonks of Cold Spring Harbor (PTP1B inhibitor) Laboratory and his colleagues didn’t find PTP1B by picking through that web. Tonks had been studying the enzyme for decades as a possible target for treatCEN.ACS.ORG
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bent Thomas R. Gilbert, associate professor, College of Science, Northeastern University, in Boston, and Laura E. Pence, professor of chemistry, University of Hartford, in West Hartford, Conn. Director of District V candidates are incumbent John E. Adams, Curators’ Teaching Professor, University of Missouri, in Columbia, and Kenneth P. Fivizzani, who is retired from Nalco, in Naperville, Ill. Councilors will elect two directors-at-large this fall. The candidates are Lee H. Latimer, head of chemistry at NeurOp Inc., in Oakland, Calif.; Willem R. Leenstra, associate professor of chemistry, University of Vermont, Burlington; incumbent Ingrid Montes, professor of chemistry, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, in San Juan; Mary Jo Ondrechen, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, Northeastern University; and Thomas W. Smith, professor of chemistry and microsystems engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York. Details about the candidates can be viewed at http://goo.gl/QIlHXU. Candidate statements will run in the Sept. 14 issue of C&EN, which is published by ACS. Ballots are scheduled to be mailed on Oct. 2, voting will remain open until Oct. 30, and results will be announced shortly thereafter. ACS members will have the option to vote via Internet or paper ballot.— SOPHIE ROVNER
ing two metabolic conditions: diabetes and obesity. Navasona Krishnan, a research associate in Tonks’s lab, suggested they look at the enzyme as a Rett target after hearing a talk about metabolic abnormalities associated with the syndrome. In the new study, the team linked PTP1B to MECP2: They found that levels of PTP1B increased in the brains of mice genetically engineered to lack the MECP2 gene. These engineered mice exhibit symptoms found in people with Rett syndrome. Next, the scientists showed that two small-molecule PTP1B inhibitors ameliorated several symptoms in the animals, including deficits in social behaviors and motor skills (J. Clin. Invest. 2015, DOI: 10.1172/jci80323). The findings are novel and exciting, says David M. Katz, a neuroscientist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He points out that PTP1B interacts with a signaling pathway known to be disrupted in Rett syndrome, so the results provide another tool to repair that important pathway. Alan K. Percy, a neurologist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, School of Medicine, thinks the paper presents an interesting strategy that deserves further study. Researchers, he says, should investigate PTP1B in other models of Rett syndrome, including animals that have known MECP2 mutations found in patients, to confirm the enzyme’s role in the disease. “I would imagine a flurry of activity with the release of this paper,” Percy says.—MICHAEL TORRICE
AUGUST 3, 2015
