Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 22, Issue 26, 2016

In the last decades, the study of the mechanisms inducing amyloid fibril formation has involved several experimental and theoretical biophysical approaches. Many efforts have been made by scientist at the borderline between biology, chemistry, biochemistry and physics in order to understand why and in which way a protein starts its amyloidogenic pattern. This fundamental research issue is evolving in parallel to th Read More

Background: A wide class of human diseases and neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, is due to the failure of a specific peptide or protein to keep its native functional conformational state and to undergo a conformational change into a misfolded state, triggering the formation of fibrillar cross-β sheet amyloid aggregates. During the fibrillization, several coexisting species are formed, giving rise to a hi Read More

Background: The treatment and diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) are two of the most urgent goals for research around the world. The cognitive decline is generally associated with the elevated levels of extracellular senile plaques, intracellular neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), and with a progressive shutdown of the cholinergic basal forebrain neurons transmission. Even if several key targets are under fervent investigati Read More

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia that seriously affects daily life. Even if AD pathogenesis is still subject of debate, it is generally accepted that cerebral cortex plaques formed by aggregated amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides can be considered a characteristic pathological hallmark. It is well known that metal ions play an important role in the aggregation process of Aβ. Methods: This review foc Read More

Background: The use of aromatic plants to relief different illness is not a new therapy. Actually aromatic plants have been used for many centuries by different cultures around the world. Pharmacological studies provide scientific support to the traditional use of aromatic medicinal plants and aromatherapy; nevertheless, more clinical trials are required regarding to their effectiveness in order to establish a guidance for their u Read More

Neurodegenerative diseases characterized by the accumulation of tau aggregates are increasing in prevalence to epidemic-like levels and there is currently no effective treatment. For many years, the focus of tau-based research was on the fibrillar, neurofibrillary tangles. However, the compilation of evidence obtained from numerous laboratories in the past few years suggests that soluble intermediate aggregates—tau Read More

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a dementia, a neurodegenerative condition, and a protein-misfolding disease or proteinopathy, characterized by protein deposits, extracellular plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles, which contain the AD’s typical pathological proteins, abnormal β-amyloid and hyperphosphorylated tau, respectively, and are located predominantly in the cortex of the frontal, par Read More

Background: Heat shock proteins are powerful endogenous cytoprotective proteins which help cells to survive recurrent cellular stress events. Identifying the underlying molecular mechanisms and molecular targets is especially interesting since it may help to develop new therapeutic strategies for the treatment of diseases. Objective: This review will focus on the group of small heat shock proteins, also named HspBs. Read More

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a terminal neurodegenerative disorder that is characterized by accumulation of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the central nervous system. However, certain individuals remain cognitively intact despite manifestation of substantial plaques and tangles consistent with what would be normally associated with fully symptomatic AD. Mechanisms that allow these subjects to escape d Read More

Pediatric drug research is still substandard, not reaching the same quality level as adult drug research. Despite the efforts made by the Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency to reduce off-label use in children, the lack of clinical studies involving the pediatric population still stands. Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics studies (PK/PD) taking growth and maturation into account are necessary to ration Read More

The macrocycles representing a unique chemical structure bridging conventional small molecules and large biomolecules, have attracted more and more attention in drug discovery over the past decade, and tremendous progress has been made toward the macrocyclization synthesis and structure diversification recently. Because of their favored size, flexibility and complexity, macrocycles can engage previously undrugga Read More