Current Drug Discovery Technologies - Volume 7, Issue 4, 2010

Cancer is an important health problem in the Developed World where it is the second cause of death, mainly associated with ageing of the population and lifestyle. Along with surgery and chemotherapy, radiation therapy (radiotherapy) is one of the most important tools to combat cancers. More than half of all cancer patients will receive radiotherapy at some stage during the course of their illness [1]. The goal of r Read More

The severe pain associated with many disorders affecting bone account for a large proportion of cases of patient morbidity, due to the encumbrance of mobility and therefore, compromised quality of life. Skeletal metastasis is one such condition, which generally complicates the treatment of the primary cancers such as that of the breast, prostate and lung - causing intense pain and eventually even mortality. This Read More

In this review paper, available data on radioembolization of unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) using commercially available radiopharmaceuticals, respectively 131I-Lipiodol, Therasphere (glass-microspheres) and SIRspheres (resin-microspheres) are reviewed. In the palliative setting, 131I-Lipiodol was shown to yield response rates of 17- 92% which in patients with portal vein thrombosis (PVT) translat Read More

Radioimmunotherapy relies on the principles of immunotherapy, but expands the cytotoxic effects of the antibody by complexing it with a radiation-emitting particle. If we consider radioimmunotherapy as a step beyond immunotherapy of cancer, the step was prompted by the (relative) failure of the latter. The conventional way to explain the failure is a lack of intrinsic killing effect and a lack of penetration into poorly vasculariz Read More

The review presented here lays out the present state of the art in the field of radionuclide therapies specifically targeted against the nucleus of cancer cells, focussing on the use of Auger-electron-emitters. Nuclear localisation of radionuclides increases DNA damage and cell kill, and, in the case of Auger-electron therapy, is deemed necessary for therapeutic effect. Several strategies will be discussed to direct radionuclides t Read More

Efforts to develop an effective malarial vaccine are yet to be successful and thus chemotherapy remains the mainstay of malaria control strategy. Unfortunately, Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes about 90% of all global malaria cases is increasingly becoming resistant to classical antimalarials, necessitating a search for new chemotherapeutics preferably with novel modes of action. Today, rational drug discovery s Read More