Current Drug Discovery Technologies - Volume 6, Issue 4, 2009

Chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the industrialized world, affecting 3 to 8 % of the population. The wide spectrum of these diseases includes rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, type-1 diabetes, Crohn's disease, and systemic sclerosis. Besides apparent clinical differences, there are also many clinical and pathogenic ove Read More

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease with a significant number of patients suffering from additional joint involvement and other co-morbidities. The precise pathomechanisms of this disease are still unknown. But based on recent findings a picture emerges putting a new subset of inflammatory T cells, so-called Th17 T cells, into the centre of psoriasis pathogenesis. These cells secrete interleukin (IL)-17 and a furt Read More

Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitides (AAV) comprise the most common group of primary systemic vasculitides and include Wegener's granulomatosis (WG), microscopic polyangiitis (MPA), Churg-Strauss syndrome (CSS), and renal-limited vasculitis (RLV). AAV share the feature of necrotizing predominantly small vessel vasculitis, but are otherwise distinct diseases with differences in the genetic Read More

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease characterized by specific organ manifestations and the production of autoantibodies to nuclear antigens. SLE can induce severe organ damage and carries the risk of fatal outcome. During recent years, no major progress has been made regarding new treatment options except for the introduction of mycophenolate mofetil. Therefore, the results of several large clin Read More

Metabolomics is a recently emerging member of the “omics” technologies. It aims at detecting and quantifying all detectable small molecules, the so-called metabolites, present in a biological sample. Because of the lower number of metabolites compared with the number of genes and proteins identified in genomics and proteomics approaches, data of metabolic studies are less complex and may therefore be more info Read More

Significant progress has been made in past decades in our understanding of the basic mechanisms underlying autoimmune diseases. Nevertheless, many questions remain unanswered, in particular regarding the mechanisms at very early stages of these diseases. Reliable animal models are of crucial importance in basic research and may help us to understand central disease pathways. They are also indispensable for pre-clinic Read More

Autoimmune bullous diseases are a heterogeneous group of disorders that can be subdivided according to the level of split formation in the intraepidermal blistering pemphigus diseases and subepidermal bullous disorders, latter including pemphigoid diseases, epidermolysis bullosa acquisita, and dermatitis herpetiformis. In the majority of autoimmune bullous disorders, disease activity can be sufficiently controlled b Read More

Heparin has been used as an anticoagulant for decades. Recently, attention has been drawn to the nonanticoagulant activities of heparin. Experimentally and clinically those non-anticoagulant properties of heparin inhibit inflammation and metastatic spread of tumor cells. On the molecular level, heparin inhibits the function, expression and/or synthesis of adhesion molecules, cytokines, angiogenic factors and com Read More

The broad spectrum of chronic inflammatory bowel diseases encompasses the two main entities Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). Rapid action and long-term duration is the superordinate goal in most therapeutic approaches facing chronic inflammation including inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) for induction and maintenance of remission. The availability of antibodies targeting TNF-α or alpha 4 integrin has r Read More

The core-in-cup matrix tablets of Metoprolol succinate were prepared by wet granulation technique. Of all the investigated formulations, the optimized formulation of MS-09 followed zero-order kinetics of drug release. Trail on MS- 09 was formulated using 7.5% hydrogenated castor-oil (HCO) and 4% of hydroxyl propyl methylcellulose (HPMC K15M) with an objective to achieve a linear release profile for 24 h. There is no Read More

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