Infectious Disorders - Drug Targets (Formerly Current Drug Targets - Infectious Disorders) - Volume 9, Issue 3, 2009

Coming from Crimea, the Black Death spread to Western Europe and North Africa during the 1340s. From 1346 to 1352, the plague killed an estimated 25-40% of Europeans of all age-groups [1], i.e. 30 to 60% of Europe population. One of the earliest and most widely accepted explanations was that God was punishing humanity for their sins. One remedy for the curse was to do penitence. Thus in 1348 there rapi Read More

Genome sequencing efforts of taxonomically proximate organisms successfully divulged proteomic diversity embedded within closely related organisms. The Salmonella enterica subspecies represents a group of enterobacteric pathogens known to share similar genomic content yet possess diverse host specificity and distinct disease symptoms. Study of Salmonella enterica subspecies proteomes reports an overesti Read More

In this article we review the organism-wide biological data available for Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum), a malarial parasite, in relation to the data available for other organisms. We provide comparisons at different levels such as amino acid sequences of proteins encoded in the genomes, protein-protein interaction features, metabolic and signaling pathways and processes. Our comparative analyses highlights th Read More

Hepatitis C is a viral infection of the liver that results in acute hepatitis and chronic liver disease, including cirrhosis and liver cancer. An estimated 170 million persons are chronically infected worldwide. The Hepatitis C virus is the pathogen agent responsible for hepatitis C. HCV is an enveloped RNA-positive virus of the flaviviridae family. The HCV genome shows remarkable sequence variability. This variability leads to the classifi Read More

The CC-chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5), a membrane protein belonging to the G-protein coupled receptor superfamily, has been identified as an essential co-receptor for HIV entry into the cells, and small molecules that inhibit HIV entry by targeting CCR5 have been in fast development as antiviral agents. This review focuses on computational studies of predicting the CCR5 structure and its interactions with known small mol Read More

The Duffy Antigen/Receptor for Chemokine (DARC) is a seven segment transmembrane protein. It was firstly discovered as a blood group antigen and was the first specific gene locus assigned to a specific autosome in man. It became more famous as an erythrocyte receptor for malaria parasites (Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium knowlesi), and finally for chemokines. DARC is an unorthodox chemokine receptor as (i) it Read More

Malaria remains one of the most burdensome human infectious diseases, with a high rate of resistance outbreaks and a constant need for the discovery of novel antimalarials and drug targets. For several reasons, Plasmodial proteins are difficult to characterise structurally using traditional physical approaches. However, these problems can be partially overcome using a number of in silico approaches. This review describes Read More

The resurgence of drug resistant tuberculosis (TB) is a major global healthcare problem. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), TB's causative agent, evades the host immune system and drug regimes by entering prolonged periods of nonproliferation or dormancy. The identification of genes essential to the bacterium in its dormancy phase infections is a key strategy in the development of new anti-TB therapeutics. The rapid e Read More

Dengue virus (DENV), a member of the family Flaviviridae, presents a tremendous threat to global health since an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide are at risk for epidemic transmission. DENV infections are primarily restricted to sub-tropical and tropical regions; however, there is concern that the virus will spread into new regions including the United States [1]. There are no approved antiviral drugs or vaccines to Read More

Resolved three-dimensional protein structures are a major source of information for understanding protein functional properties. The current explosive growth of publicly available protein structures is producing large volumes of data for computational modelling and drug design methods. Target-based in silico drug design tools aid design and optimize compounds to bind to specific targets. MED-SuMo is a powerful technolo Read More

The recent years have seen the emergence of diseases which have spread very quickly all around the world either through human travels like SARS or animal migration like avian flu. Among the biggest challenges raised by infectious emerging diseases, one is related to the constant mutation of the viruses which turns them into continuously moving targets for drug and vaccine discovery. Another challenge is related to the early Read More

Text mining has become an integral part of all research in the medical field. Many text analysis software platforms support particular use cases and only those. We show an example of a bibliographic tool that can be used to support virtually any use case in an agile manner. Here we focus on a Pipeline Pilot web-based application that interactively analyzes and reports on PubMed search results. This will be of interest to any scien Read More