Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 20, Issue 8, 2014

Metal ions that leach into biotherapeutic drug product solution during manufacturing and storage, result in contamination that can cause physico-chemical degradation of the active molecule. In this review, we describe various mechanisms by which metal ion leachates can interact with therapeutic proteins and antibodies. Site-specific modifications due to metal catalyzed oxidation (MCO) of the therapeutic proteins caus Read More

Increasing amounts of evidence suggest that Alzheimer's disease (AD) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) are linked to each other. We have recently identified in vitro a high affinity interaction between β-amyloid peptide (Aβ) of AD and islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) of T2D which results in the formation of non-fibrillar and non-cytotoxic Aβ-IAPP hetero-oligomers. The Aβ-IAPP interaction delays cytotoxic self-association of both p Read More

Rational design for chemical compounds targeting protein-protein interactions has grown from a dream to reality after a decade of efforts. There are an increasing number of successful examples, though major challenges remain in the field. In this paper, we will first give a brief review of the available methods that can be used to analyze protein-protein interface and predict hot spots for chemical ligand design. New developm Read More

The cellular network and its environment govern cell and organism behavior and are fundamental to the comprehension of function, misfunction and drug discovery. Over the last few years, drugs were observed to often bind to more than one target; thus, polypharmacology approaches can be advantageous, complementing the “one drug - one target” strategy. Targeting drug discovery from the systems biology standpoint ca Read More

Computing volumes and surface areas of molecular structures is generally considered to be a solved problem, however, comparisons presented in this review show that different ways of computing surface areas and volumes can yield dramatically different values. Volumes and surface areas are the most basic geometric properties of structures, and estimating these becomes especially important for large scale simulations w Read More

The assembly of naturally occurring amyloid peptides into cytotoxic oligomeric and fibrillar aggregates is believed to be a major pathologic event in over 25 human diseases. Blocking of or interfering with the aggregation of amyloid peptides such as amyloid-β (Aβ) using small organic molecules, peptides and peptidomimetics, and nanoparticles that selectively bind or inhibit Aβ aggregates is a promising strategy for the developm Read More

The ability of a single protein fold to make multi-modal interactions with itself and others for transmitting biological signals across multiple receptor families is a recurring theme in signal transduction. The Toll/IL-1 receptor (TIR) domain represents an evolutionarily conserved alpha-beta Flavodoxin-like protein fold [1], which has evolved complex multifaceted molecular interactions capable of transmitting a variety of deve Read More

Mutant p53 could have either a dominant negative effect or a gain of function to interfere with p53’s ability to maintain genomic stability. In the present study, we screened for TP53 mutations in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) samples from 202 Chinese patients, followed by analysis of transcriptional and apoptotic activities of 21 p53 mutants with or without wild-type p53 present. We identified a new point mutation p.P7 Read More

We briefly discuss recent progress in computational characterization of the sequence and structural properties of β-barrel membrane properties. We discuss the emerging concept of weakly stable regions in β-barrel membrane proteins, computational methods to identify these regions and mechanisms adopted by β-barrel membrane proteins in nature to stabilize them. We further discuss computational methods to identify Read More

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and proteins with long intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDPRs) lack ordered structure but are involved in a multitude of biological processes, where they often serve as major regulators and controllers of various functions of their binding partners. Furthermore, IDPs/IDPRs are often related to the pathogenesis of various diseases, including cancer. Intrinsic disorder confers multiple f Read More

Drug designing targeting protein-protein interactions is challenging. Because structural elucidation and computational analysis have revealed the importance of hot spot residues in stabilizing these interactions, there have been on-going efforts to develop drugs which bind the hot spots and out-compete the native protein partners. The question arises as to what are the key 'druggable' properties of hot spots in protein-protei Read More