(1) Department of Medicine and Department of Biochemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Abstract:
P-glycoprotein (P-gp) is an ATP-dependent drug pump that can transport a broad range of hydrophobic compounds out of the cell.
The protein is clinically important because of its contribution to the phenomenon of multidrug resistance during AIDS/HIV
and cancer chemotherapy. P-gp is a member of the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) family of proteins. It is a single polypeptide
that contains two repeats joined by a linker region. Each repeat has a transmembrane domain consisting of six transmembrane
segments followed by a hydrophilic domain containing the nucleotide-binding domain. In this mini-review, we discuss recent
progress in determining the structure and mechanism of human P-glycoprotein.