Current Drug Targets - Immune, Endocrine & Metabolic Disorders - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2005

Endocrine disruptors (EDs) are exogenous environmental molecules that may affect the synthesis, secretion, transport, metabolism, binding, action, and catabolism of natural hormones in the body. EDs may thus interact with the endocrine system of animals and humans and can exert this effect even when present in minute amounts. EDs have adverse impacts on a number of developmental functions in wildlife and humans. Criti Read More

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated demyelinating and degenerative disease of the central nervous system (CNS), with lesions predominantly occurring in the CNS white matter. The current treatment for MS relies on therapies that primarily target the peripheral immune response. However, it is clear that these strategies alone are insufficient for treating the chronic progressive disability that is the ultimat Read More

Mitochondrial trifunctional protein (MTP) is a complex protein that catalyzes the last three steps of long chain fatty acid oxidation. MTP defects have emerged recently as important inborn errors of metabolism because of their clinical implications. These disorders are recessively inherited and display a spectrum of clinical phenotypes in affected children including hepatic dysfunction, cardiomyopathy, neuro-myopathy, and may Read More

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic and destructive arthropathy with systemic features, the etiopathogenesis of which remains unclear. It is characterized by relapsing and remitting inflammation and hyperplasia of synovial cells. Proinflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin-2 (IL-2), play an important role in maintaining cartilage damage and severe destruction of the joints due to an uncontrolled activation of cellular i Read More

There has been an alarming increase in the population diagnosed with diabetes worldwide. Although there is an ongoing debate as to the role of liver in the pathogenesis of diabetes, reduction of hepatic glucose production has been targeted as a strategy for diabetes treatment. Indeed, reduction of hepatic glucose production can be achieved through modulation of both hepatic and extra-hepatic targets. This review des Read More

The experimental determination of the binding constant of a drug for its target molecule is of considerable importance. It is a basic experimental parameter in a variety of studies, such as the prediction of drug efficiency, or in the pharmacokinetic drug interaction. DNA-binding drugs have been reported to be able to interfere in a sequence dependent manner with biological functions such as topoisomerase activity, restricti Read More

Organ-specific autoimmune diseases are characterized by the presence of relapse and remittance of the clinical signs, and last for a long period of time in most cases without an appropriate treatment. Immunopathologically, T cells that respond to organ-specific autoantigens play an important role in the development of inflammatory lesions in the target organ. These pathogenic T cells that had been activated by various stimuli Read More

Growth hormone (GH) exerts many effects in addition to its ability to stimulate growth. The metabolic effects are either chronic diabetogenic or acute insulin-like. The latter effects are only seen in cells that have been deprived of the hormone for a few hours. After exposure to GH the ability of the cells to respond with insulin-like effects disappears within a couple of hours, a negative feedback loop, which is a part of the chron Read More

Steroid hormones are synthesized in steroidogenic cells of the adrenal, ovary, testis, placenta and brain and are essential for normal reproductive function and bodily homeostasis. The rate-limiting and regulated step in steroid biosynthesis is the intramitochondrial transport of cholesterol, a process that is mediated by the steroidogenic acute regulatory (StAR) protein. The importance of StAR has been illustrated by analyses Read More

The goal to attenuate inflammation without inducing generalized immunosuppression has focused the attention on chemokines, a family of chemotactic peptides that regulate the leukocyte traffick into tissues. However, the development of drugs that block ckemokine activity may be hampered by the observation that some chemokines display pleiotropic biologic functions. For example, the chemokines CXCL9 / Mig, C Read More