Current Drug Discovery Technologies - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2013

Cancer is a deadly disease and a huge burden to the society. Although the last 60 years has seen improvements in cancer diagnostics, treatment strategies against most of the complex malignancies have not lived up to the mark. In the drug discovery area, the attrition rates have spiraled out of control, indicating that there is certainly something amiss employing the current research approaches against cancer. Advances in co Read More

Small molecules with selective efficacy can be used as drugs. Drugs typically have a therapeutic dose range where the benefit from intended effects outweighs the cost of unintended (side) effects. Herein, I use case scenarios to illustrate potential advantages and pitfalls of treatment with drugs alone or in combination. Combinations of drugs may show surprising effects given the effects of individual drugs, in phenomena k Read More

People worldwide are still threatened by various complex disease phenotypes, especially cancer which is usually caused by the accumulation of multi-factor-driven alterations. Although drugs achieve the therapeutic functions by targeting particular molecular, the therapies used nowadays against diseases are not effective enough due to the limitation of the knowledge about the drug-disease associations. The rapid increasi Read More

With increasing knowledge of cellular networks of gene and molecular interactions, and their alterations in GBM (glioblastoma multiforme), it is now possible to apply methods of Network Pharmacology (NP) to predict candidate drug targets for this malignant brain tumor. NP requires the development of mathematical methods for network stability and perturbation analysis to identify sensitive and druggable network comp Read More

Natural compounds have been known to exert inhibitory effects on the development and progression of human cancers. However, the targets of these naturally occurring agents are largely elusive. Recently, systems biology approaches based on high-throughput technologies such as DNA microarrays have begun to be utilized for investigating the targets of drugs including natural compounds. Therefore, in this review articl Read More

Transcription factors (TFs) play central role in normal cellular physiology and their aberrant expression is linked to different diseases. Hepatocyte Nuclear Factors (HNFs) are TFs that have been recognized to play multiple roles in liver physiology. Emerging research has highlighted their function in the sustenance of solid tumors, indicating that HNFs could serve as possible therapeutic targets in cancer. Although, there have been Read More

In the process of drug development, there has been an exceptionally high attrition rate in oncological compounds entering late phases of testing. This has seen a concurrent reduction in approved NCEs (new chemical entities) reaching patients. Network pharmacology has become a valuable tool in understanding the fine details of drug-target interactions as well as painting a more practical picture of phenotype relationships t Read More

The use of fluorescent technologies in neurosurgery has a substantial history with applications to vascular and tumor surgery dating back to the 1940s. This review focuses on the applications of fluorescence imaging to intracranial vascular and neoplastic lesions using sodium fluorescein. The authors performed a literature search for articles about the use of sodium fluorescein in neurosurgery. Fifty-five articles were initially ret Read More

Context: One of the leading causes of cancer-associated deaths in most men and women in the Western world is lung cancer. There are various types of treatments depending on the type and the stage of the cancer. A recent type of therapy is targeted gene therapy which aims to target genes that cause lung cancer. However, this therapy has some drawbacks including lack of proper vectors for delivery. These drawback Read More