Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 17, Issue 5, 2011

The neurobiology of disease is moving forward at a very rapid pace. Thus, pharmacologists as well as all the broad range of researchers working in the development of new drugs active in neural tissues have to make an extraordinary effort to make Neuropharmacology move as fast as our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying neural diseases grows. For instance, some time ago, neurodegenerative diseases such as Park Read More

Midkine (MK) is a heparin-binding cytokine, and promotes growth, survival, migration and other activities of target cells. After describing the general properties of MK, this review focuses on MK and MK inhibitors as therapeutics for diseases in the central nervous system. MK is strongly expressed during embryogenesis especially at the midgestation period, but is expressed only at restricted sites in adults. MK expression is induced Read More

Cerebrovascular disease is the leading cause of death and disability in Japan and most Western countries. Gene transfer techniques may be applicable to the treatment of serious types of stroke, since several experimental studies have revealed the usefulness of gene therapy in the protection of neurons, reduction of infarct size and improvement of function. Prevention of vasospasm after subarachnoid hemorrhage i Read More

The neuropathic pain syndrome is complex. Current drugs to treat neuropathic pain, including anticonvulsivants and antidepressants, fail in up to 40-50% of the patients, while in the rest of them total alleviation is not normally achieved. Increased research advances in the neurobiology of neuropathic pain have not translated in more successful pharmacological treatments by the moment, but recent progress in the experi Read More

Parkinson's disease (PD) is generally a sporadic disease, and only a small proportion of cases have a clear genetic component. During the last few years, a possible specific cause triggering death of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra, drug of abuseinduced neurotoxicity, is being considered as a potential mechanism to develop PD, especially in the case of abuse of amphetamine and its derivatives. Recent evidenc Read More

Current pharmacological treatments for eating disorders and obesity are of limited value and thus the identification of novel targets is highly needed to enhance the development of more effective drugs. Among the bottlenecks limiting the introduction of new medicines is the reported heterogeneity of these diseases, which makes it difficult to find drugs with broad activity and the lack of animal models with translational Read More

According to classical thinking about Parkinson's disease, loss of dopaminergic input from the substantia nigra pars compacta leads to overactivity and underactivity of the indirect and direct output pathways, respectively, in the basal ganglia. Administration of the dopamine precursor L-DOPA (l-3, 4-dihydroxyphenylalanine) is proposed to induce changes in the opposite directions. L-DOPA is the most used drug to treat Parkinson's Read More

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder affecting approximately 1% of the population older than 60 years. Classically, PD is considered to be a motor system disease and its diagnosis is based on the presence of a set of cardinal motor signs that are consequence of a pronounced death of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc). Nowadays there is consider Read More

Amyloid-β (Aβ) immunotherapy has recently begun to gain considerable attention as a potentially promising therapeutic approach to reducing the levels of Aβ in the Central Nervous System (CNS) of patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Despite extensive preclinical evidence showing that immunization with Aβ1-42 peptide can prevent or reverse the development of the neuropathological hallmarks of AD, in 2002, the clinic Read More

Over the past five decades, the pharmacological treatment of depression has been based on the pathophysiological hypothesis of a deficiency in monoamines, mainly serotonin and noradrenaline. Antidepressants prescribed today, all of them designed to enhance central monoaminergic tone, present several important limitations, including a 2-5 weeks response lag and also a limited clinical efficacy. As it is increasingly evident t Read More