Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology - Volume 18, Issue 7, 2017

Background: Powdery drugs such as cocaine and heroin are frequently adulterated or diluted predominantly to obtain more doses and to increase the drug dealer's profits, but also to enhance, to modify or to oppose drug effects. The aim of this report is to provide an overview of the recent scientific literature on medicines as well as on new psychoactive substances, used as cutting agents (i.e. pharmacologically active adulte Read More

Background: Among therapeutic proteins, enzymes represent small and of course profitable market. They can be used to treat important, rare, and deadly diseases. Enzyme therapy is the only available treatment for certain disorders. Method: Here, pharmaceutical enzymes are reviewed. They are categorized in four main groups, enzymes in replacement therapy, enzymes in cancer treatment, enzymes for fibrinolysis, and finall Read More

Background: The awareness of factors causing obesity and associated disorders has grown up in the last years from genome to a more complicated concept (developmental programming) in which prenatal and early-postnatal conditions markedly modify the phenotype and homeostasis of the individuals and determine juvenile growth, life-time fitness/obesity and disease risks. Method: Experimentation in hu Read More

Background: Persicaria is a genus of flowering plants generally used for traditional medicine and nutritional supplements in tropical and subtropical East Asian countries. Previous studies have shown that Persicaria extracts alleviate lipid peroxidation, hypertension, and inflammation. Objective: We investigated the anti-oxidative and anti-microbial effects of ethanol extracts of Persicaria nepalensis (Meisn.) Miyabe, and isolated an Read More

Background: Tocotrienols (T3) are the naturally occurring vitamin E derivatives that possess antioxidant properties and therapeutic potential in diabetic complications. The bioactivities of the derivatives are determined by the number and arrangement of methyl substitution on the structure. Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the effects of T3 derivatives, σ-T3, γ-T3 and α-T3 on insulin secretion of rat panc Read More

Background: Development of effective drug delivery systems (DDS) is a critical issue in health care and medicine. Advances in molecular biology and nanotechnology have allowed the introduction of nanomaterial-based drug delivery systems. Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) can form the basis of drug delivery systems by virtue of their ability to support the transport of cargoes into the cell. Potential cargoes include protein Read More

Effectiveness of the whole-cell pertussis vaccine is apparent, but improvement in the quality of the vaccine is necessary to achieve strong immunogenicity with a low bacterial number content. Method: Inactivated Bordetella pertussis (B. pertussis) cells entrapped microspheres were prepared via an emulsification method and analyzed for morphology, size, size distribution, loading efficiency, loading capacity, release Read More

Background: Benzimidazoles are privileged biomolecules which form an integral part of vitamin B12 and have been attracting numerous researchers all over the world to assess their potential therapeutic significance. Objectives: The comparative in vitro antiplatelet activity of newly synthesized benzimidazole derivatives, M3BIM, C2BIM, and L2BIM in thrombin, adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and epinephrineinduced wa Read More