Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 16, Issue 5, 2020

Nuclear receptors (NRs) are a superfamily of ligand-dependent transcription factors that are closely related to cell development, differentiation, reproduction, homeostasis, and metabolism. According to the alignments of the conserved domains, NRs are classified and assigned the following seven subfamilies or eight subfamilies: (1) NR1: thyroid hormone like (thyroid hormone, retinoic acid, RAR-related orphan receptor, pero Read More

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) can cause the terrible tuberculosis (TB), which is reported as one of the most dreadful epidemics. Although many biochemical molecular drugs have been developed to cope with this disease, the drug resistance—especially the multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistance (XDR)—poses a huge threat to the treatment. However, traditional biochemical experimental method to Read More

Background: Tuberculosis is one of the biggest threats to human health. Recent studies have demonstrated that anti-tubercular peptides are promising candidates for the discovery of new anti-tubercular drugs. Since experimental methods are still labor intensive, it is highly desirable to develop automatic computational methods to identify anti-tubercular peptides from the huge amount of natural and synthetic peptides. Read More

Background: Observational studies support the inflammation hypothesis in coronary heart disease (CHD). As a pleiotropic proinflammatory cytokine, Interleukin-18 (IL-18), has also been found to be associated with the risk of CHD. However, to our knowledge, the method of Mendelian Randomization has not been used to explore the causal effect of IL-18 on CHD. Objective: To assess the causal effect of IL-18 on the risk Read More

Background: Molecular characterization of insulin resistance, a growing health issue worldwide, will help to develop novel strategies and accurate biomarkers for disease diagnosis and treatment. Objective: Integrative analysis of gene expression profiling and gene regulatory network was exploited to identify potential biomarkers early in the development of insulin resistance. Methods: RNA was isolated from livers of animal Read More

Background: Xanthine oxidase (XO; EC 1.17.3.2) has been considered as a potent drug target for the cure and management of pathological conditions prevailing due to high levels of uric acid in the bloodstream. The role of xanthine oxidase has been well established in the generation of hyperuricemia and gout due to its important role in catalytic oxidative hydroxylation of hypoxanthine to xanthine and further catalyses o Read More

Background: Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most common malignant tumor of the adult kidney. Objective: The aim of this study was to identify key genes signatures during RCC and uncover their potential mechanisms. Methods: Firstly, the gene expression profiles of GSE53757 which contained 144 samples, including 72 kidney cancer samples and 72 controls, were downloaded from the GEO database. And then differe Read More

Background: Dairy safety has caused widespread concern in society. Unsafe dairy products have threatened people's health and lives. In order to improve the safety of dairy products and effectively prevent the occurrence of dairy insecurity, countries have established different prevention and control measures and safety warnings. Objective: The purpose of this study is to establish a dairy safety prediction model based on mac Read More

Background: Coxsackievirus infections are associated with cases of aseptic meningitis, encephalitis, myocarditis, and some chronic disease. Methods: A series of benzo[d][1,2,3]triazol-1(2)-yl derivatives (here named benzotriazol-1(2)-yl) (4a-i, 5a-h, 6a-e, g, i, j and 7a-f, h-j) were designed, synthesized and in vitro evaluated for cytotoxicity and antiviral activity against two important human enteroviruses (HEVs) members of t Read More

Background: The ecto-nucleoside triphosphate diphosphohydrolases (NTPDases) terminate nucleotide signaling via the hydrolysis of extracellular nucleoside-5'-triphosphate and nucleoside- 5'-diphosphate, to nucleoside-5'-monophosphate and composed of eight Ca2+/Mg2+ dependent ectonucleotidases (NTPDase1-8). Extracellular nucleotides are involved in a variety of physiological mechanisms. However, they are rapi Read More

Background: Bedaquiline is a novel anti-tuberculosis drug that inhibits Mycobacterial ATP synthase. However, studies have found that bedaquiline has serious side effects due to high lipophilicity. Recently, the complete structure of ATP synthase was first reported in the Journal of Science. Objective: The study aimed to design, synthesise and carry out biological evaluation of antituberculosis agents based on the structure of Read More