Sookmyung Women’s University team develops muscle-specific protein degradation technology
- Views 28
- Writer 커뮤니케이션팀
- 보도일자 2026-05-27
A research team led by Professor Junhyeong Yim at Sookmyung Women’s University has developed a new targeted protein degradation technology that can selectively remove specific proteins in muscle cells, the university said.
The technology could provide a new platform for developing treatments for sarcopenia and other intractable muscle-related diseases.
Targeted protein degradation has emerged as a next-generation strategy in drug discovery because it can eliminate disease-associated proteins inside cells rather than simply inhibiting their activity. One of the representative technologies, PROTAC, uses the ubiquitin-proteasome system to selectively degrade target proteins, including those that have been difficult to control with conventional inhibitors.
However, most PROTACs developed so far depend on a limited number of E3 ligases, such as CRBN and VHL, which are broadly expressed across various tissues. This has made it difficult to achieve protein degradation that occurs only in specific tissues.
Yim’s team focused on KLHL41, an E3 ligase highly expressed in muscle cells, and proposed it as a new E3 ligase platform for muscle-specific targeted protein degradation. Although KLHL41 was known to be involved in muscle cell proliferation, differentiation and maintenance, it had not been used as an E3 ligase for PROTAC development.
The team discovered a new ligand that binds to KLHL41 through AI-based virtual screening and chemical biology approaches. Using the ligand, the researchers designed PROTAC molecules capable of selectively degrading target proteins in muscle cells and confirmed the technology’s potential through cell-based and animal experiments.
“This study shows that the KLHL41 ligand can serve not merely as a drug candidate, but as a platform for designing muscle-specific protein degraders,” Yim said. “We expect this work to contribute to the development of therapeutics targeting muscle disease-related proteins and to the expansion of tissue-selective targeted protein degradation technologies.”
The study was conducted in collaboration with research teams led by Professor Jongmin Park at Kangwon National University and Professors Juyong Lee and Hankum Park at Seoul National University. The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.
(Reference information)
Journal/Source: Nature Communications (IF 15.7, JCR top 7 percent)
Title: Discovery of a KLHL41 Ligand for Muscle Specific Protein Degradation
Link/DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-73252-4