Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 12, Issue 11, 2005

This review chronicles original literature dating back to 1992 outlining the applications of parallel synthesis and combinatorial chemistry to the synthesis of compound libraries focused towards specific superfamilies of molecular targets. Target families that have received significant literature coverage include kinases, proteases, nuclear hormone receptors and cell surface receptors, notably GPCRs.

This review provides up-to-date information on the inhibition of ribonucleotide reductase (RNR), the enzyme that catalyses the reduction of ribonucleotides into deoxyribonucleotides. Taking in account that DNA replication and repair are essential mechanisms for cell integrity and are dependent on the availability of deoxyribonucleotides, many researchers are giving special attention to this enzyme, since it is an attract Read More

Terpenoids is a class of natural compounds found in higher plants, mosses, liverworts, algae and lichens, as well as in insects, microbes or marine organisms. Through centuries many of these compounds have been used as ingredients of perfumes, drugs, narcotics or pigments. Labdanes, belonging to the bicyclic diterpenoids group, have been found as secondary metabolites in tissues of fungi, insects, marine organisms, a Read More

Increased concentrations of extracellular adenosine are reached in ischemic or inflamed tissues but have also been detected inside tumoral masses. If this finding may account for an important role of adenosine in the pathogenesis of tumors remains to be determined in view of its contradictory effects on cell survival and proliferation. In particular, adenosine was found to exert its effects on proliferation and on cell Read More

Atrial fibrillation is the most common disorder of cardiac rhythm. In spite of diagnosis simplicity, patients with atrial fibrillation are difficult to treat. In the recent years with the description of the phenomenon called remodelling, it has been possible to better define the principle mechanisms responsible for initiation, maintenance and, in some instances, termination of atrial fibrillation. Electrical, mechanical and anatomical re Read More

In 1990, the worldwide accepted Shackleton [1] method, which provides a possibility of determining the steroid metabolites from urine, was adopted in our laboratory. The procedure is very useful in the diagnosis of different endocrine diseases and in the recognition of dysfunction or absence of enzymes with an important role in steroid metabolism, and it gives possibility to control the treatment in patients with these Read More

Irinotecan (CPT-11, 7-ethyl-10-[4-(1-piperidino)-1-piperidino] carbonyloxycamptothecin) has exhibited clinical activities against a broad spectrum of carcinomas by inhibiting DNA topoisomerase I (Topo I). However, severe and unpredictable dosing-limiting toxicities (mainly myelosuppression and severe diarrhea) hinder its clinical use. The latter consists of early and late-onset diarrhea, occurring within 24 hr or ≥ 24 hr after CPT-1 Read More