You are researching an "orphan disease" with no available treatment. Your lab develops a drug that mimics a lipophilic hormone thought to be lacking in the disease, and you are looking for a pharmaceutical company to partner with to run a clinical trial. Based on the reaction from each team, which would you choose to work with?

Question

A.  Company A: "What you've developed is wonderful, but we'll need to develop a delivery system to get the drug across the cell membrane."
B.  Company B: "Your new drug seems very promising. Do you know which G-protein coupled receptor it binds to?"
C.  Company C: "We're interested in developing this drug - it could really help people. Do you know which genes the hormone regulates?"

Clarify Question
What is the key concept addressed by the question?
What type of thinking is required?

Gather Content
What do you already know about hormones? What other information is related to the question?

Choose Answer
Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?

Reflect on Process
Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?

Answer 1

C.  Company C: "We're interested in developing this drug - it could really help people. Do you know which genes the hormone regulates?"

Clarify Question
What is the key concept addressed by the question?
        · Which company is the best partner for hormone drug development?
What type of thinking is required?
            o This is an evaluate question because you have to consider each potential company’s comments to assess their understanding of lipophilic hormones.

Gather Content
What do you already know about hormones? What other information is related to the question?
        · Hormones deliver their signals through the bloodstream. As blood travels to all tissues, they bind to either cell-surface receptors or intracellular receptors. Lipophilic hormones can travel through the cell membrane while hydrophilic hormones such as proteins cannot cross the cell membrane and so must bind to cell-surface receptors. Since the drug that your lab developed mimics a lipophilic hormone, it will directly cross the cell membrane and interact with DNA to regulate genes. Because Company A and B mentioned needed a drug delivery system to get the drug across the cell membrane and G-protein coupled receptors which are associated with cell-surface receptors, they were showing their ignorance as to how lipophilic hormones work.

Choose Answer
Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?
        · Because Company A and B mentioned needed a drug delivery system to get the drug across the cell membrane and G-protein coupled receptors which are associated with cell-surface receptors, they were showing their ignorance as to how lipophilic hormones work. Thus, you would want to select Company C.

Reflect on Process
Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?
       · Answering this question correctly depended upon understanding how lipophilic hormones work. If you got the answer correct, great! If not, which answer did you choose? Did you think that lipophilic hormones would be associated with G-proteins or need some other means to get across the cell membrane? Lipophilic (or hydrophobic) molecules can readily cross the cell membrane, so such mechanisms are not needed.