Researchers at the University of Louisville are at present working on a solution for patients whose salivary glands have been damaged or no longer function due to radiation therapy or prescription drugs. Prof. Douglas Darling and his team have come across a protein-sorting method used by the salivary gland that could form the basis for advanced therapies especially for patients with impaired salivary glands due to cancers.

If we don’t realize but salivary glands are necessary for a lot of functions in our mouth. These are lubrication, defence and beginning digestion in the mouth. The largest of the glands, the parotid, secretes important proteins into the saliva. As with all salivary glands, it has multiple secretion pathways and therefore must differentiate the proteins destined for saliva into the correct pathway for secretion. This can be quite a task considering that there are seven possible pathways. The first pathway takes proteins to the salivary duct, others carry different proteins to the cells to be secreted into the blood or to form a supportive matrix for the cells. Transport along these pathways occurs by sorting the proteins into vesicles which are the hollow membrane sacs which carry their load to the correct destination.

Until now, it was believed that cargo proteins are moved into the forming vesicles by attaching to sorting receptor proteins. Prof. Darling and his team have found out a completely new approach that suggests that salivary sorting receptor proteins may not exist.

This new research can certainly go on to bring great relief to people who suffer from dry mouth syndrome.