Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 18, Issue 7, 2011

The type I receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) are involved in various aspects of cell growth, survival, and differentiation. Among the known RTKs, the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and ErbB-2 (HER-2) are two widely studied proteins that are prototypic members of the ErbB family which also includes ErbB-3 (Her-3) and ErbB-4 (Her-4). Overexpression of ErbB-2 and EGFR has been associated with aggressive disease and p Read More

Aminopeptidases play essential roles in protein maturation, activation, and stability as well as in the degradation and regulation of hormonal and nonhormonal peptides that can serve as important enzyme targets for drug design. This review will focus on an effective inhibitor of aminopeptidases, bestatin, including work to find better inhibitors in the past three decades that has sought to optimize bestatin and pro Read More

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the leading cause of joint pain and disability in middle-aged and elderly patients, and is characterized by progressive loss of articular cartilage that eventually leads to a complex process involving degradation of various components of the cartilage matrix, chief among them are the cartilage-specific type II collagen (CII) and aggrecan. While the loss of aggrecan is thought to be an early and reversible pr Read More

Carbohydrate chemistry and glycobiology have become a “hot” subject. These extensive, complex structures serve essential roles in cell surface phenomena, but we are only beginning to understand what some of these functions are; any advances in the development of synthetic and/or analytical tools for glycobiology are extremely useful for our understanding of the roles of carbohydrates in biology, and as biomarkers Read More

Cognitive dysfunction following surgery is a common complication, which increases the incidence of other co-morbid conditions, hospital and health-care costs. The reported rate of the occurrence of post-operative cognitive decline varies with different studies, depending on population profile, type of surgery, definition of cognitive disorder and detection methods, design of study, etc. It remains unclear whether these ps Read More

The tumor suppressor protein p53 mediates critical cellular functions including regulation of cell cycle, apoptosis, DNA repair, and senescence. This protein has been found to be inactivated or functionally down-regulated in several malignancies such as Li- Fraumeni syndrom, hepatocellular carcinoma, breast cancer, cervical cancer, and acute myeloid leukemia. Thus, p53 represents an attractive target for therapeutic desig Read More

Nowadays, influenza virus is still a big threat to human. Hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) are the two viral surface proteins, which play important roles in the life cycle of influenza virus. Current influenza vaccines and anti-influenza drugs work mainly by interfering with the functions of the two proteins. In this review, we will display some recent studies about the two proteins. As to HA, this review covers a lot including Read More

The discovery of new biologically active compounds that can be exploited therapeutically to treat disease has stalled, with fewer new drugs entering the market every year. The spotlight has now turned onto nanoparticles (NPs) as a versatile and multifaceted platform for the delivery of drugs. NPs offer better pharmacokinetic properties, controlled and sustained release, and targeting of specific cells, tissues or organs. Al Read More

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is regarded as the hepatic manifestation of metabolic syndrome and is an important and common cause of chronic liver disease with a potential to develop end-stage liver disease. While important advances in the pathophysiology have been achieved using genetically modified and diet-induced animal models, in-vitro models have been only recently proposed. These models include primary c Read More

With an inventory of several hundreds secondary metabolites identified, Cannabis sativa L. (hemp) is one of the phytochemically best characterized plant species. The biomedical relevance of hemp undoubtedly underlies the wealth of data on its constituents and their biological activities, and cannabinoids, a class of unique meroterpenoids derived from the alkylation of an olivetollike alkyl resorcinol with a monoterpene unit, ar Read More