Question

You work for a pharmaceutical company where you are assigned the task of creating new drug therapies to treat thyroid disorders such as hyperthyroidism (high levels of T3 and T4) and hypothyroidism (low levels of T3 and T4). Your team has designed a few drugs, and your job is to identify which drug(s) would be successful in treating thyroid disorders based on your knowledge of thyroid hormone synthesis. Below is the list of drugs your team designed (all of these are hypothetical drugs).

• Peroxidine: A drug that inhibits thyroid peroxidase from functioning
• Cimigine: A drug that inhibits potassium/iodine cotransporter
• Iodimine: A drug that inhibits iodinase from functioning
• Aldosine: A drug that inhibits production of angiotensinogen from the liver
• Aldoramine: A drug that inhibits sodium/iodine cotransporter
• Thyromine: A drug that stimulates thyroglobulin production

Identify the drug(s) that would be successful in treating hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, and explain why and how they would be successful.

Be detailed in your explanation and support your answer with facts from your textbook, research, and articles from scholarly journals. In addition, remember to add references in APA format to your posts to avoid plagiarism.

Answer 1

Steps of thyroid synthesis:

Iodine in our blood is transported into the follicular cells of thyroid with the help of sodium iodine symporter, it is a secondary active transport. Now the iodine inside the follicular cell gets transported to the centre of thyroid follicle with the help of iodine chloride exchanger. Now the thyroid peroxidase enzyme present in the membrane of the thyroid follicular cells act on this reduced iodine to produce oxidised iodine. This oxidised iodine combines with the tyrosine of thyroglobulin molecule in the centre of thyroid follicle to become monoiodotyrosine. Now these monoiodotyrosine combine with each other to form diiodotyrosine. Now these mono and di iodotyrosine combine with each other to form triiodotyrosine or tetraiodotyrosine which are the predominant thyroid hormones in our body. The active form is T3 and major transport form is T4. Thus the peripheral organs have deiodinase which converts T4 to T3 for utilisation of the active form of hormone.

Peroxidine, inhibits thyroid peroxidase, thus inhibits formation of oxidised iodine which is required for production of thyroid hormones. Thus thyroid hormone production is inhibited. This is helpful in hyperthyroidism.

Cimigine: It inhibits Sodium or Potassium and iodine cotransporter. Thus inhibiting uptake of iodine into thyroid gland and thus inhibits formation of thyroid hormone. It will be helpful in hyperthyroidism.

Iodimine, inhibits iodinase, thus inhibiting peripheral conversion of T4 to T3. This will also help in decreasing peripheral effects of thyroid hormone. Helpful in Hyperthyroidism.

Aldosine, inhibits production of angiotensin from liver. Angiotensin has no role in thyroid hormone homeostasis. Thus it will not be beneficial in hyper or hypothyroidism.

Aldoramine has similar action that of cimigine. Helpful in hyperthyroidism.

Thyromine stimulates thyroglobulin production which are rich in tyrosine and site of formation of thyroid hormones. Thus it will increase thyroid hormone production. This will be beneficial in hypothyroidism.