Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 20, Issue 24, 2013

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has become a health problem to societies worldwide affecting millions of people. AD normally ensues in middle and late life but its specific cause remains unknown. Besides amyloid-β deposition and hyperphosphorylated tau protein, increased production of reactive species (RS) has also been described to be a hallmark in early steps of this disorder. Antioxidant therapy has received considerable atte Read More

Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) are essential unsaturated fatty acids with a double bond (C=C) starting after the third carbon atom from the end of the carbon chain. They are important nutrients but, unfortunately, mammals cannot synthesize them, whereby they must be obtained from food sources or from supplements. Amongst nutritionally important polyunsaturated n–3 fatty acids, α-linolenic acid (ALA) Read More

For many years the spotlight in drug discovery has been on a relatively small number of validated therapeutic target classes, such as G-protein coupled receptors and enzymes such as protein kinases, with well characterized enzymatic and cellular activities. However, with recent progress in genomics and proteomics, protein-protein interactions (PPIs) provide new way of finding novel bioactive molecules acting on their interf Read More

Over the last decade an increasing number of studies have been published reporting on the inhibitory potency or selectivity that several types of ligands show against human galectin-3 (hGal-3). The reason for this interest lies in the many important roles galectins play both in intra and extra-cellular functions. Among galectins, galectin-3 stands out because it is the only known member of its subfamily in mammals, is small an Read More

Nowadays, cancer treatment is moving away from conventional cytotoxic drugs to target-based agents. This is primarily attributed to some remarkable leaps made in deciphering the tumor-relevant signaling pathways. Among them, PI3K/Akt/mTOR cascade presently elicits a substantial amount of pharmaceutical interests owing to its intimate role in tumor initiation and progression. Additionally, its medicinal potential lies Read More

Drug-induced liver injury is a ubiquitous issue in clinical settings and pharmaceutical industry. Hepatotoxicity elicited by drugs may be intrinsic or idiosyncratic, both which are driven by different molecular mechanisms. Recently, a unifying mechanistic model of drug-induced liver injury has been introduced. According to this model, drug-induced hepatotoxicity relies on 3 consecutive steps, namely an initial cellular insult that Read More

Background and Purpose: Transplantation/infusion of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is a promising new approach for treatment of spinal cord injury (SCI). Considering some defined chemokines of MSCs that may have adverse side effects in SCI repair, it is therefore desirable to search for a new chemokine, which should not only be harmless to the host, but also would attract more MSCs to the injury area of spinal cord. This s Read More