Toronto, ON (April 17^th, 2015) - The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) at the University of Toronto and the Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) have entered into an “open-source” research partnership with two Toronto-based hospitals to test tool compounds, called chemical probes, against epigenetic proteins in research models of Rett syndrome.

Inhibiting bromodomains - which are small interaction modules on proteins that assemble acetylation-dependent transcriptional regulatory complexes - could be a way to alter the expression of disease-promoting genes. In a Nature Reviews Drug Discovery article, the SGC highlights recent developments in the discovery of small-molecule bromodomain inhibitors and discuss how they might be used in cancer, inflammation and viral infection.