Current Drug Targets - Volume 20, Issue 16, 2019

Beta-thalassemia is a genetic disorder characterized by the impaired synthesis of the betaglobin chain of adult hemoglobin. The disorder has a complex pathophysiology that affects multiple organ systems. The main complications of beta thalassemia are ineffective erythropoiesis, chronic hemolytic anemia and hemosiderosis-induced organ dysfunction. Regular blood transfusions are the main therapy for beta thalassemia Read More

Implementation of novel and biocompatible polymers in drug design is an emerging and rapidly growing area of research. Even though we have a large number of polymer materials for various applications, the biocompatibility of these materials remains as a herculean task for researchers. Aptamers provide a vital and efficient solution to this problem. They are usually small (ranging from 20 to 60 nucleotides, single-strande Read More

Background: Hepatitis B is a very harmful and epidemic disease caused by hepatitis B virus (HBV). Although an effective anti-HBV vaccine is available, chronic infection poses still a huge health burden in the whole world. The present anti-HBV drugs including nucleoside analogues and interferonalpha have their limitations without exception. There is no effective drug and therapeutic method that can really and truly cur Read More

Schizophrenia is a debilitating mental disorder with relatively high prevalence (~1%), during which positive manifestations (such as psychotic states) and negative symptoms (e.g., a withdrawal from social life) occur. Moreover, some researchers consider cognitive impairment as a distinct domain of schizophrenia symptoms. The imbalance in dopamine activity, namely an excessive release of this neurotransmitter in the striatum a Read More

Introduction: The Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) 2019 recommends the use of absolute blood eosinophil count as a guide for the escalation and de-escalation of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) in the pharmacological management of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We evaluated the risk of moderate or severe exacerbations among patients escalating and de-escalating IC Read More

Amylin is a neuroendocrine peptide hormone secreted by pancreatic β-cells; however, amylin is toxic to β-cells when it is aggregated in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). It is important to understand amylin’s structures and aggregation mechanism for the discovery and design of effective drugs to inhibit amylin aggregation. In this review, we investigated experimental and computational studies on amylin structures and inh Read More

The fibrinolytic system consists of a balance between rates of plasminogen activation and fibrin degradation, both of which are finely regulated by spatio-temporal mechanisms. Three distinct inhibitors of the fibrinolytic system that differently regulate these two steps are plasminogen activator inhibitor type-1 (PAI-1), α2-antiplasmin, and thrombin activatable fibrinolysis inhibitor (TAFI). In this review, we focus on the mechanisms Read More