Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 21, Issue 28, 2014

Chemotherapy continues to be the main treatment option for cancer. Although systemic chemotherapy can efficiently eradicate cancer cells, a significant proportion of patients carry tumors that present a chemoresistant phenotype, resulting in disease progression, cancer relapse, and reduced survival. It has also become clear that the effect of most chemotherapeutic drugs is associated with their capacity to generate Read More

Numerous basic-helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors (TF) have been found to play important roles in tumor growth and progression. Elucidation of the common features of these TFs can pave the road to possible therapeutic intervention. The existing studies of possible inhibition of these TFs are concentrated on the development of peptides or small molecules that inhibit their dimerization or prevent their DNA bindi Read More

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are proteolytic enzymes belonging to the family of zinc-dependent endopeptidases that are capable of degrading almost all the proteinaceous components of the extracellular matrix (ECM). It is known that MMPs play a role in a number of renal diseases, such as, various forms of glomerulonephritis and tubular diseases, including some of the inherited kidney diseases. In this regard, ECM accum Read More

About 2.3% of the world’s population is infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and patients have a high risk of developing liver cirrhosis and its complications. Current therapeutic strategies are based on a combination of pegylatedinterferon, ribavirin and (only for patients with genotype 1 infection) a protease inhibitor (boceprevir or telaprevir). Consequently, all these combinations have the limitations of interferon. In fact, Read More

Since Bortezomib was approved by US FDA as the first drug to treat multiple myeloma, various boronic acid compounds have been developed as enzyme inhibitors. This paper reviewed the progress of boronic acid-based inhibitors against enzymes including proteasome, serine protease, HDACs and other enzymes in the past decade.

Src family kinases (SFKs) are a group of non-receptor tyrosine kinases whose activity is involved in the regulation of cellular morphology, motility, proliferation and survival. An aberrant activation and expression of these kinases contribute to the pathogenesis and progression of a broad range of diseases, such as a large number of solid tumors, various hematological malignancies and some neuronal pathologies. The search for Read More

4-Aminobutyric acid is an inhibitory neurotransmitter involved in the control of neuronal activity in the mammalian central nervous system. There is considerable direct and indirect evidence that impaired activity of GABAmediated inhibitory synapses may be an important causative factor in experimental and clinical seizure disorders. This review is focused on the recent development of compounds which can influence GABA Read More

This invited review on the beneficial effects of nutraceuticals in the gastrointestinal tract reports previous work conducted by the authors as well as the work by other researchers in this expanding field. The text of our article on several occasions reports sentences very similar or identical to those which appear in the manuscript from which the information was obtained and this applies to both our own work and some other r Read More