Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 16, Issue 18, 2009

Chronic lymphoid leukemias include well defined mature B-cell and T-cell neoplasms with diverse natural history and specific morphological, immunophenotypic and molecular characteristics. The most common adult leukemia in the Western world is chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Rarer indolent lymphoid leukemias include prolymphocytic leukemia, hairy cell leukemia, large granular lymphocyte leukemia and T-cell l Read More

The ideal drug discovery process of new platinum based drugs should take into account three basic fundaments: on one side the mechanisms of action and the corresponding target biomolecules, on the other side, the possible mechanisms of resistance of cancer cells and their biochemical pathways and, finally, the pharmacokinetic and toxicity properties (ADMET) that will condition the clinical usefulness of the new drugs. At Read More

The hyaluronidases (HAases) are a group of less extensively studied glycosidases distributed throughout the animal kingdom and are popularly known as ‘spreading factors’. In recent years, HAases received much attention due to their ability to abruptly alter the hyaluronic acid (HA) homeostasis. HAases preferentially degrade HA, which is a megadalton acidic structural polysaccharide found exclusively in the extracel Read More

Being one of the simplest and widely used isosteric replacements for the peptide bond, reduced amide has been successfully applied in the synthesis of many bioactive compounds. The introduction of reduced amide not only confers the pseudopeptide a higher enzymatic resistance and a linear and more flexible structure, but also increases its hydrophylicity due to the introduction of a protonable group. It has also prove Read More

Antibodies (Abs), often associated with antimicrobial and antitumor agents, have emerged as an important class of novel drugs for antigen-driven therapeutic purposes in diverse clinical settings, including oncology and infectious diseases. Abs commonly give rise in the treated host to anti-Ab responses, which may induce adverse reactions and limit their therapeutic efficacy. Their modular domain architecture has been exploit Read More

An overview of conjugates of coordination complexes and organometallic complexes of Pt, Ru, Fe, Re, lanthanoids and other metals with natural and synthetic estrogens and antiestrogens targeting the nuclear estrogen receptors is provided. These conjugates are used as targeted cytotoxic agents or - if radiolabeled - as imaging probes for the detection of estrogen receptor-rich tissues such as hormone-dependent tumours. Read More

Sulfated oligosaccharides display an important role in biological processes. They bind proteins through interactions mediated by highly specific sequences (heparin - antithrombin, heparan sulfate - growth factors / herpes simplex virus) or by electrostatic interaction between sulfate groups and cationic sites of proteins. Sulfated oligosaccharides are involved in biological events as protein localisation at cell surfaces, the contr Read More

Maternal diabetes develops in 2-6% of total pregnancies, depending on geographical and ethnic background. About 10% of fetuses from diabetic pregnancy display congenital malformations in various organ systems including cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, genitourinary and neurological systems, among which the neural tube defects (NTDs) such as anencephaly, holoprosencephaly and syntelencephaly were more freque Read More