Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 22, Issue 19, 2015

This review presents an in-depth overview of the modification of porphyrins with bioconjugates and their applications in medicine today. Porphyrin bioconjugates ranging from nucleotides to steroids are under active scrutiny. However, carbohydrates have been at the forefront of such research in recent years and offer significant potential. This is attributed to their own selectivity to lectins on the surface of cancer cells and their i Read More

The eukaryotic cell, with its organelle organization, represents a challenge for protein traffic. Contrary to what occurs in the endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondrial protein import is proposed to occur postranslationaly, as proteins are synthesized in cytoplasmic ribosomes and only then imported to the organelle. Because the diameter of the Tom and Tim pores is too narrow for the passage of a folded protein, it is assumed that po Read More

Estrogen receptor-alpha positive (ER+) breast cancer constitutes 70-75% of the disease incidence. Tamoxifen has been the basis of endocrine therapy for patients with ER+ breast cancer for more than three decades. The treatment reduces the annual mortality rate of breast cancer by 31%, and remains the most effective targeted cancer therapy. However, approximately one-third of patients treated with adjuvant tamo Read More

Cyathane diterpenoids, occurring exclusively in higher basidiomycete (mushrooms), represent a structurally diverse class of natural products based on a characteristic 5-6-7 tricyclic carbon scaffold, including 105 members reported to date. These compounds show a diverse range of biological activities, such as antimicrobial, anti-MRSA, agonistic toward the kappa-opioid receptor, antiinflammatory, anti-proliferative and nerve g Read More

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia that leads to increasing death and mental disability among humans. Current therapy of AD mainly relies on the use of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs) or antagonists of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs), which only relieve the symptoms of the disease but not halt its progression. Nevertheless, Traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) are highl Read More