Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 22, Issue 13, 2015

Hematopoietic cell kinase (Hck) is a member of the Src-family of non-receptor tyrosine kinases, which plays many roles in signalling pathways involved in the regulation of cell processes. Hck is expressed in cells of hematopoietic origin, specifically myelomonocytic cells and B lymphocytes. It participates in phagocytosis, adhesion, migration, regulation of protrusion formation on cell membrane, lysosome exocytosis, podoso Read More

Although the understanding the pathophysiology of atherogenesis and atherosclerosis progression has been one of the major goals of cardiovascular research during the last decades, the precise mechanisms underlying plaque destabilization are still unknown. The disruption of the plaque and the thrombosis in the lumen that are mostly determined by the expansion of the necrotic core (NC) are driven by various me Read More

Prospective epidemiological studies suggest that type 2 diabetes is a risk factor for neurodegenerative pathologies such as Alzheimer disease, vascular dementia, and Parkinson disease. Drugs that act as incretin receptor agonists or inhibit the proteolytic degradation of incretins (dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors) have been approved since 2005 for use in diabetes treatment. Dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP4) cleaves N-terminal d Read More

Circadian clocks are present in most organisms to coordinate daily rhythms in physiology and behavior. The general molecular mechanisms are based on interlocked transcription-translation feedback loops driving rhythms in gene expression of a series of core clock genes. Multiple levels of regulations including transcriptional, posttranscriptional and post-translational mechanisms make circadian clock regulation more compl Read More

The peculiar physio-anatomical structure of the eye and the poor physico-chemical properties of many drug molecules are often responsible for the inefficient treatment of ocular diseases by conventional dosage forms, and justify the development of innovative ocular drug delivery systems. Lipid-based nanocarriers (LNC) are among the newer and interesting colloidal drug delivery systems; they show the capability to improv Read More

The target based drug design approaches are a series of computational procedures, including visualization tools, to support the decision systems of drug design/discovery process. In the essence of biological targets shaping the potential lead/drug molecules, this review presents a comprehensive position of different components of target based drug design which include target identification, protein modeling, molecular dynamics s Read More

The authors comment on the recently proposed food addiction spectrum that represents a theoretical model to understand the continuum between several conditions ranging from normality to pathological states, including eating disorders and obesity, as well as why some individuals show a peculiar attachment to food that can become an addiction. Further, they review the possible neurobiological underpinnings of th Read More