Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 14, Issue 15, 2007

Cyclooxygenase (COX) is the rate limiting enzyme catalyzing the conversion of arachidonic acid into prostanoids, lipid mediators critically implicated in a variety of physiological and pathophysiological processes, including inflammation, vascular and renal homeostasis, and immune responses. Since the early 1990s it has been appreciated that two isoforms of COX exist, referred to as COX-1 and COX-2. Although structurally ho Read More

Asthma is characterized by airway inflammation, bronchial hyper-responsiveness, and reversible airway obstruction. Medications for asthma include corticosteroids, β2-adrenergic receptor agonists, chromones, methylxanthines, and leukotriene modifiers. Despite these advances in therapy, many symptoms are not well controlled. Since asthma is a chronic airway inflammation with a bias towards a type 2 T helper (T Read More

Cardioprotective interventions are defined as interventions able to increase myocardial resistance to ischemia. The authors approach the issue of cardioprotection on the basis of the present knowledge about the biochemical mechanisms responsible for the injury produced by myocardial ischemia or ischemia-reperfusion. Reversible and irreversible injury are distinguished. The former is largely accounted for by the direct c Read More

A challenging question in biology is how cells control their shape and volume. The relative abundance of organelles can be radically modified to comply with a new task, an example being the massive development of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in Ig-secreting plasma cells. The ER is the site where secretory proteins are made and folded. Remarkably, it can discriminate between native and non-native proteins, restricting Read More

Protein glycation is a slow natural process involving the chemical modification of the reactive amino and guanidine functions in amino acids by sugars and carbohydrates-derived reactive carbonyls. Its deleterious consequences are obvious in the case of long-lived proteins in aged people and are exacerbated by the high blood concentration of sugars in diabetic patients. The non-enzymatic glycation of proteins occurs thro Read More

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a relatively new cytotoxic treatment, predominantly used in anticancer approaches, that depends on the retention of photosensitizers in tumor and their activation after light exposure. This technology is based on the light excitation of a photosensitizer which induces very localized oxidative damages within the cells by formation of highly reactive oxygen species, the most important being singl Read More

Adrenomedullin (AM) is a potent vasodilatory peptide originally discovered in human pheochromocytoma tissue. AM and AM gene expression are widely distributed in the cardiovascular system, including the kidney. The co-localization of AM and its receptor components such as calcitonin receptor-like receptor (CRLR), receptor activity modifying protein (RAMP)2 and RAMP3 in the kidney, heart, and vasculature suggests an Read More

In our review entitled “Radioligand Development for PET Imaging of -Amyloid (Aβ) ” Current Status” by Cai, et al. in Current Medicinal Chemistry, 2007, 14 , 19-52. Please note brain uptake values at 2, 30, and 60 min in Table 23 are not uniformly in %SUV [(%ID/g) x g (body weight)] as implied. For example, the data shown are [(%ID/g) x kg (body weight)] for PIB in mouse and %ID/g for IMPY also in mouse. Because the average Read More