Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 16, Issue 3, 2016

Peptides are being successfully used in various fields including therapy and drug delivery. With advancement in nanotechnology and targeted delivery carrier systems, suitable modification of peptides has enabled achievement of many desirable goals over-riding some of the major disadvantages associated with the delivery of peptides in vivo. Conjugation or physical encapsulation of peptides to various nanocarriers Read More

Nanomedicine is an exponentially growing field, and gold nanoparticles (GNPs) in particular are extensively used in research due to their abilities as anti-cancer drug carriers for chemotherapy and as dose enhancers in radiotherapy. Most GNP research in the past involved a system where GNP localization was in the cytoplasm of the cell. However, it is predicted that therapy response can be enhanced if GNPs can be effectively t Read More

Self-assembled peptide nanomaterials display the advantageous properties of injectability, biodegradability and biocompatibility. These peptide nanomaterials, by self-assembling, can be widely applied in such fields as drug delivery (small molecules and large molecules), regenerative medicine and nanobiotechnology. In this review, we mainly discuss the properties of these peptide nanomaterials in their physical, chem Read More

Cancer is a heterogeneous disease that results from a multi-step process, being characterized by uncontrolled proliferation, invasion and metastasis. The understanding that tumor cells can be recognized by host immune cells has highlighted the potential advantages of using vaccination purposes to eliminate cancer cells, while avoiding severe side effects associated to conventional cancer treatments. Interest Read More

Covalent conjugation of anticancer drugs to targeting carriers (e.g., antibodies or small molecules) capable of selectively binding to tumor-specific antigens, is emerging as a successful strategy to overcome the drawbacks of traditional chemotherapy. Due to its overexpression on blood vessels of human tumors, αvβ3 integrin is one of the most studied receptors of tumor-targeted therapeutics: several peptides and peptidomime Read More

Absence of safe and efficient methods of nucleic acids delivery is one of the major issues which limits the development of human gene therapy. Highly efficient viral vectors raise questions due to safety reasons. Among non-viral vectors peptide-based carriers can be considered as good candidates for the development of “artificial viruses” - multifunctional polyplexes that mimic viruses. Suggested strategy to obtain multif Read More

The integrin receptors represent valuable targets for therapeutic interventions; being overexpressed in many pathological states, their inhibition can be effective to treat a number of severe diseases. Since integrin functions are mediated by interactions with ECM protein ligands, the inhibition can be achieved by interfering with such interactions using small mimetics of the integrin-ligand recognition motifs (e.g. RGD, LDV, etc.). Read More

In the last decade, we have been developing some gold(III) derivatives showing interesting antitumor properties and reduced systemic and renal toxicity, compared to the clinically-established reference drug cisplatin. Starting from the rationale at the base of our investigations, this review has been divided into two sections, with respect to our patented first- (aminoderivatives) and secondgeneration (peptidomimetics) potential Read More