Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 20, Issue 8, 2013

The leading Alzheimer's disease (AD) therapeutics to date involves inhibitors of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), which should, in principle, elevate cholinergic signaling and limit inflammation. In spite of the effectiveness in 20%-30% of AD patients, more attention has been paid to find new anti-AChE agents from medicinal plants. Galanthamine, contained in the bulbs and flowers of Galanthus and related genera like Narcissus, re Read More

Medicinal plants are an essential part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), an ancient complex therapy considered today as one of the most complete complementary medicine system. Chinese Herbal Medicines (CHM) listings included in Chinese Materia Medica cover more than 1500 plants and a great number of composite preparations. Recently, several TCM herbs have been included into European Pharmacopoeia a Read More

Resveratrol, a star natural product from red wine, has attracted increasing attention around the world. In recent years, resveratrol derivatives (including its oligomers) have shown amazing chemical diversity and biological activities. They have been emerging to be promising new sources of natural antioxidant. This review summarizes recent finding on antioxidant activities of resveratrol derivatives and the structure-activity r Read More

Platelets are anuclear blood cells originating from bone megakaryocytes. Despite being anuclear, their number is maintained by apoptosis, a process of programmed cell death. The rate of apoptotic death of platelets is accelerated by oxidative and shear stress, ex vivo storage (blood banking conditions) and certain pathophysiological disorders. These factors initiate apoptotic events through the mitochondria- mediate Read More

Chronic pains management costs billions of dollars in medical exchequer to the world population. Additionally, 77% of people with chronic pains also have a degree of medically treatable depression. Opioids have a narrower safety index due to their side effects associated with its tolerance, hyperalgesia and subsequent dependence. Likewise, non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and anticonvulsants, also have limited safety Read More

Plants and plant cells have been used to produce many diverse and valuable recombinant proteins, including subunit vaccines, antibodies and antibody fragments, hormones, blood products, cytokines and enzymes. Different plant species and platforms have been explored as production hosts, each with unique properties in terms of production timescales, environmental containment, scalability, downstream processing st Read More

Plant cells cultured in liquid medium in bioreactors are now being used commercially to produce biopharmaceutical proteins. The emergence of in vitro plant cell culture as a production vehicle reflects the importance of key biosafety and biocontainment concerns affecting the competitiveness of alternative systems such as mammalian cell culture and agriculture. Food plant species are particularly attractive as hosts for in vitro Read More

Metabolomics is playing an increasingly important role in plant science. It aims at the comprehensive analysis of the plant metabolome which consists both of primary and secondary metabolites. The goal of metabolomics is ultimately to identify and quantify this wide array of small molecules in biological samples. This new science is included in several systems biology approaches and is based primarily on the unbias Read More