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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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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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.2882