Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 14, Issue 23, 2007

The present manuscript reviews novel data on the progressive involvement of different regions of the central nervous system as well as peripheral nerves in Parkinson's disease. Most of these regions are involved in the regulation of the autonomic nervous system, and their damage is concomitant with the specific loss of sympathetic cardiac axon terminals. This causes a cardiovascular dysfunction, which occurs solely i Read More

Purine and pyrimidine nucleotides have been identified as potent extracellular signalling molecules, acting at two classes of cell surface receptors, ionotropic P2X and metabotropic P2Y receptor (-R) types. Hitherto eight subtypes of the P2Y-R family have been cloned from mammalian species that exhibit sensitivity to the adenine nucleotides ATP/ADP (P2Y1,11,12,13), the uracil nucleotides UTP/UDP (P2Y2,4,6 or UDP-glucose in t Read More

Chemokines and chemokine receptors, primarily found to play a role in leukocyte migration to the inflammatory sites or to second lymphoid organs, have recently been found expressed on the resident cells of the central nervous system (CNS). These proteins are important for the development of the CNS and are involved in normal brain functions such as synaptic transmission. Increasing lines of evidence have imp Read More

Factor Xa (fXa) is a critical serine protease situated at the confluence of the intrinsic and extrinsic pathways of the blood coagulation cascade. FXa catalyses the conversion of prothrombin to thrombin via the prothrombinase complex. Its singular role in thrombin generation, coupled with its potentiating effects on clot formation render it an attractive target for therapeutic intervention. Otamixaban is a synthetically derived pa Read More

Recent advances in genomic drug development and high-throughput technologies, such as combinatorial chemistry, high throughput screening and in silico screening, are making it easier to screen compounds with pharmaceutical activity. Drugs developed by genomic and throughput technologies traverse the epithelial and endothelial membranes. Although the paracellular pathway is a potent drug delivery route for th Read More

A hallmark of naturally occurring tumor immunity is the aberrant expression of so called “onconeural antigens” or “paraneoplastic antigens”. At present, these two terms are used as synonyms for proteins which are normally expressed only in neuronal tissues, but in the process of carcinogenesis, they can be detected in tumors located outside the nervous system. As neuronal tissues are immunopriveleged zones, e Read More

Angiogenesis is a tightly regulated process that leads to the formation of new blood vessels sprouting from pre-existing microvasculature and occurs in limited physiological conditions or under pathological situations such as retinopathies, arthritis, endometriosis and cancer. Blockade of angiogenesis is an attractive approach for the treatment of such diseases. Particularly in malignancies, antiangiogenic therapy should b Read More

DDX3 (or Ded1p), the highly conserved subfamily of the DEAD-box RNA helicase family (40 members in humans), plays important roles in RNA metabolism. DDX3X and DDX3Y, the two human paralogous genes of this subfamily of proteins, have orthologous candidates in a diverse range of eukaryotes, from yeast and plants to animals. While DDX3Y, which is essential for normal spermatogenesis, is translated only in the test Read More