Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2011

The intense activity in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy applied to biomedical and, in particular, pharmaceutical research represents, both, an opportunity and a challenge when reviewing the published work for an issue devoted to NMR in drug discovery. The wide success of NMR is partly due to the excellent sensitivity to chemical structure and molecular dynamics coupled with the non-invasive an Read More

One of the central hallmarks of cancer is the rapid and infinite cellular proliferation. In order to cope with increased requirement for building blocks and energy, cancer cells develop abnormal metabolic properties. Detailed assessment of cancer cell metabolism can provide biological information for use in both drug discovery and development of personalized cancer therapy. Analysis of intact tissue using high resolution magic ang Read More

In this article, the application of high resolution NMR spectroscopy to study the effect of therapeutic compounds on cells, tissues and organisms is reviewed. To illustrate how these NMR methods can provide useful information for a better understanding about the mechanism of action of drugs and their interactions with metabolic pathways, the emphasis is placed on most recent work about drug therapeutic intervention in biolo Read More

Over the past three decades nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy has been developed into a mature technique for the characterization of interactions of small molecule ligands with their corresponding protein and nucleic acid receptors. In fact, a significant number of industrial and academic laboratories employ NMR for screening small molecule compound collections for binding to defined macromolecular targets, t Read More

“In-cell nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)” is a unique method for characterization of conformation, interaction and dynamics of proteins inside living cells at atomic level. Since the method was proposed by Dotch and co-workers in 2001(1), its application had been limited to bacterial cells and oocytes of Xenopus laevis(2). Recently, we reported the method for efficient delivery of 15N-labeled proteins into human HeLa cells Read More

In situ structural characterization of organic compounds attached to solid supports can be achieved by high-resolution magic angle spinning NMR (HRMAS NMR), a technique that provides solution-like spectra for resin-bound molecules. This review outlines the principles of the technique, the influence of the solid support on data quality, and NMR experiments that are useful for obtaining valuable information. The review descri Read More

We describe the details of the magnetic resonance spectroscopy and chemical shift imaging techniques for the human brain which have been developed over the last two decades. With these non-invasive tools, it is now readily possible to repeatedly assay up to 20 common brain metabolites. From the perspective of drug discovery, each of these metabolites could fulfill a number of useful functions: disease bioma Read More

Even though alterations in the microenvironmental properties of tissues underlie the development of the most prevalent and morbid pathologies, they are not directly observable in vivo by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) or Spectroscopy (MRS) methods. This circumstance has lead to the development of a wide variety of exogenous paramagnetic and diamagnetic MRI and MRS probes able to inform non invasively on micro Read More