Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 9, Issue 4, 2002

The development of a vaccine for cancer has been difficult compared to the effective vaccines of infectious diseases. Most tumor antigens are not entirely foreign and are expressed on normal tissues, thus, making it difficult to induce strong immune responses against self antigens. A peptide mimic, however, may have the potential to generate greater immune responses than those induced to self peptides. In this review we di Read More

In search of new molecular entities for discovering new drugs and materials, organic chemists are looking for innovative approaches that try to imitate nature in assembling quickly large number of distinct and diverse molecular structures from ‘nature-like’ and yet unnatural designer building blocks using combinatorial approach. The main objective in developing such libraries is to mimic the diversities displayed in stru Read More

Activities of ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin against an SHV-5 extended-spectrum ß-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae strain were studied in vitro and in vivo in septic mice using a high inoculum. Susceptibility to ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin was independent of the inoculum size. In killing curve studies, after 24 hours the initial 7.69 log 10 CFU / ml increased in the control to 9.34, while it was reduced to 4.83 b Read More

Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) is one of the most attractive targets for medicinal chemists. Among 5-HTRs, the 5-HT 1A subtype is the best studied and it is generally accepted that it is involved in psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression. Several structurally different compounds are known to bind 5-HT 1A R sites. Among these, arylpiperazine derivatives represent one of the most important classes of Read More

This review focuses on the major developments in depsipeptide research since 1995. Depsipeptides are bio-oligomers composed of hydroxy and amino acids linked by amide and ester bonds. Many depsipeptides show very promising biological activities, including anticancer, antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, and anti-clotting or anti-antherogenic properties. In this report depsipeptides exhibiting these pr Read More

2-oxo acid dehydrogenase complexes are a ubiquitous family of multienzyme systems that catalyse the oxidative decarboxylation of various 2-oxo acid substrates. They play a key role in the primary energy metabolism: in glycolysis (pyruvate dehydrogenase complex), the citric acid cycle (2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase complex) and in amino acid catabolism (branched-chain 2-oxo acid dehydrogenase complex). Malfunctioni Read More