Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 23, Issue 2, 2016

Peptidyl arginine deiminases (PADs) are a small group of isozymes that convert Arg residues on the surface of proteins into citrulline residues, typically as a part of posttranslational processing. PADs are present in most of the tissues, and the isozyme distribution is tissue-specific. In the past 15 years, it is becoming apparent that PADs are either upregulated or their catalytic activity is enhanced in certain disease conditions, in Read More

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading cause of mortality worldwide. It is widely accepted that oxidative stress plays a key role in their development and progression; hence oxidative damage might be abrogated by antioxidants. Polyphenols are phytochemicals showing extensively studied antioxidant properties in-vivo. Most representative sources of these compounds include fruits, greens, nuts, herbs, cocoa, tea an Read More

The PDE4 enzyme has been proven to be a versatile drug target for therapeutics to treat diverse disease conditions such as asthma, COPD, diabetes, Huntington’s disease, and various other inflammatory disorders. The treatment of COPD is the most studied utility for PDE4 inhibitors due to their ability to inhibit inflammatory cell responses. Roflumilast is the only approved drug belonging to this class to treat COPD and has Read More

ROS1 is a pivotal transmembrane receptor protein tyrosine kinase which regulates several cellular processes like apoptosis, survival, differentiation, proliferation, cell migration, and transformation. There is increasing evidence supporting that ROS1 plays an important role in different malignancies including glioblastoma, colorectal cancer, gastric adenocarcinoma, inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor, ovarian cancer, a Read More

The Amaryllidaceae occupies a privileged status amongst medicinal plants in having delivered the Alzheimer’s drug galanthamine to the clinical market. Following its resounding success, there have been several positive indicators for the emergence of an anticancer drug from the family due to the potent antiproliferative activities manifested by several of its alkaloid constituents. Of these, the phenanthridones such as pancrat Read More

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a cancer of the nasopharyngeal epithelium with distinct geographical, ethnic and racial distribution. Several genetic, ethnic and environmental risk factors, have been implicated in nasopharyngeal pathogenesis and of significance, is the Epstein - Barr virus (EBV)- latent infection observed in most patients. Patients with NPC are typically diagnosed only in advanced stages due to non-specific s Read More