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A peek into the atomic details of thalidomide's clinical effects

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After being used in the 1950s to treat morning sickness in pregnant women, with devastating effects, thalidomide and its derivatives (lenalidomide and pomalidomide) are now widely used in cancer therapy. New structural work from two groups gives insights into the basis for the teratogenicity and other clinical effects of these drugs.

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Figure 1: Structure of DNA damage–binding protein (DDB1) and Cereblon (CRBN).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sagar Bhogaraju and Ivan Dikic are at the Buchmann Institute for Molecular Life Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.,

    Sagar Bhogaraju & Ivan Dikic

  2. Ivan Dikic is also at the Institute of Biochemistry II, Goethe University School of Medicine, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and the Institute of Immunology, School of Medicine, University of Split, Split, Croatia.,

    Ivan Dikic

Authors
  1. Sagar Bhogaraju
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  2. Ivan Dikic
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Correspondence to Ivan Dikic.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Bhogaraju, S., Dikic, I. A peek into the atomic details of thalidomide's clinical effects. Nat Struct Mol Biol 21, 739–740 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.2882

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