Search results for " drug design"
showing 10 items of 25 documents
Human exome and mouse embryonic expression data implicate ZFHX3, TRPS1, and CHD7 in human esophageal atresia
2020
Introduction Esophageal atresia with or without tracheoesophageal fistula (EA/TEF) occurs approximately 1 in 3.500 live births representing the most common malformation of the upper digestive tract. Only half a century ago, EA/TEF was fatal among affected newborns suggesting that the steady birth prevalence might in parts be due to mutational de novo events in genes involved in foregut development. Methods To identify mutational de novo events in EA/TEF patients, we surveyed the exome of 30 case-parent trios. Identified and confirmed de novo variants were prioritized using in silico prediction tools. To investigate the embryonic role of genes harboring prioritized de novo variants we perfor…
Structural Investigations on Novel Non-Nucleoside Inhibitors of Human Norovirus Polymerase
2022
Human norovirus is the first cause of foodborne disease worldwide, leading to extensive outbreaks of acute gastroenteritis, and causing around 200,000 children to die annually in developing countries. No specific vaccines or antiviral agents are currently available, with therapeutic options limited to supportive care to prevent dehydration. The infection can become severe and lead to life-threatening complications in young children, the elderly and immunocompromised individuals, leading to a clear need for antiviral agents, to be used as treatments and as prophylactic measures in case of outbreaks. Due to the key role played by the viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) in the virus life…
Computational methodologies applied to Protein-Protein Interactions for molecular insights in Medicinal Chemistry
2021
In living systems, proteins usually team up into “molecular machinery” implementing several protein-to-protein physical contacts – or protein-protein interactions (PPIs) – to exert biological effects at both cellular and systems levels. Deregulations of protein-protein contacts have been associated with a huge number of diseases in a wide range of medical areas, such as oncology, cancer immunotherapy, infectious diseases, neurological disorders, heart failure, inflammation and oxidative stress. PPIs are very complex and usually characterised by specific shape, size and complementarity. The protein interfaces are generally large, broad and shallow, and frequently protein-protein contacts are…
Similarity-Based Virtual Screening to Find Antituberculosis Agents Based on Novel Scaffolds: Design, Syntheses and Pharmacological Assays
2022
A method to identify molecular scaffolds potentially active against the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) is developed. A set of structurally heterogeneous agents against MTBC was used to obtain a mathematical model based on topological descriptors. This model was statistically validated through a Leave-n-Out test. It successfully discriminated between active or inactive compounds over 86% in database sets. It was also useful to select new potential antituberculosis compounds in external databases. The selection of new substituted pyrimidines, pyrimidones and triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidines was particularly interesting because these structures could provide new scaffolds in this field. T…
Relaxant effect of sildenafil in the rabbit basilar artery
2005
We hypothesized that sildenafil, inhibitor of phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE-5), interacts with the nitric oxide (NO)-cGMP pathway in the cerebral arteries and shows vasoactive effects. To prove it in the isolated rabbit basilar artery, we compared the effects of sildenafil with other PDE-5 inhibitors, assessed the endothelial dependence of the vasoactive responses, and used modulators of the cGMP and cAMP signaling processes. Sildenafil (10 nM-0.1 mM) induced concentration-dependent relaxations of endothelin-1 (10 nM)-precontracted basilar artery, which were partially inhibited both in endothelium-denuded arteries and in arteries precontracted by depolarization with KCl (50 mM). Endothelin-1 (1 …
New linezolid-like 1,2,4-oxadiazoles active against Gram-positive multiresistant pathogens
2013
The synthesis and the in vitro antibacterial activity of novel linezolid-like oxadiazoles are reported. Replacement of the linezolid morpholine C-ring with 1,2,4-oxadiazole results in an antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus both methicillin-susceptible and methicillin-resistant comparable or even superior to that of linezolid. While acetamidomethyl or thioacetoamidomethyl moieties in the C(5) side-chain are required, fluorination of the phenyl B ring exhibits a slight effect on an antibacterial activity but its presence seems to reduce the compounds cytotoxicity. Molecular modeling performed using two different approaches - FLAP and Amber software - shows that in the binding…
3-Aryl-2-[1H-benzotriazol-1-yl]acrylonitriles: a novel class of potent tubulin inhibitors.
2011
During a screening for compounds that could act against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a series of new cellular antiproliferative agents was identified. The most cytotoxic molecules were evaluated against a panel of human cell lines derived from hematological and solid human tumors. In particular, (E)-2-(1H-benzo[d] [1,2,3]triazol-1-yl)-3-(4-methoxyphenyl)acrylonitrile (1) was found to be of a potency comparable to etoposide and greater than 6-mercaptopurine in all cell lines tested. Accordingly, a synthesis of a new series of (E)-2-(5,6-dichloro-1H-benzo[d] [1,2,3]triazol-1-yl)-3-(4-R-phenyl)acrylonitriles was conducted in order to extend the studies of structure-activity relationship (SAR) f…
Inhibition of neuroeffector transmission in human vas deferens by sildenafil
2000
Sildenafil (0.1 - 30 microM), a cyclic GMP phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE 5) inhibitor, induced inhibition of electrically evoked contractions of ring segments of human vas deferens from 34 vasectomies. Zaprinast (0.1 - 100 microM), another PDE 5 inhibitor, and the nitric oxide (NO) donor sodium nitroprusside (SNP) (0.1 - 100 microM) had no effect on neurogenic contractions. The inhibition induced by sildenafil was not modified by the inhibitor of guanylate cyclase 1H-[1,2,4]oxadiazolo[4,3-a]quinoxaline-1-one (ODQ) (1 - 30 microM) but it was abolished by the K(+) channel blockers tetraethylammonium (TEA, 1 mM), iberiotoxin (0.1 microM) and charybdotoxin (0.1 microM). Sildenafil, zaprinast and SNP…
Relaxation induced by cGMP phosphodiesterase inhibitors sildenafil and zaprinast in human vessels
2000
Abstract Background . Sildenafil is currently used in the treatment of erectile dysfunction. However, assessment of direct effects of sildenafil on coronary arteries and on arteries used as coronary grafts is unknown. This study was designed to investigate the effects of sildenafil on contracted human coronary, internal mammary, and radial arteries obtained from multiorgan donors. The observations were extended to forearm veins. Zaprinast was included in this study for comparison. Methods . Segments of left coronary, internal mammary, and radial arteries, and forearm veins were obtained from 16 multiorgan donors. Vascular rings were suspended in organ bath chambers and isometric tension was…
An adaptive multimeme algorithm for designing HIV multidrug therapies.
2007
This paper proposes a period representation for modeling the multidrug HIV therapies and an Adaptive Multimeme Algorithm (AMmA) for designing the optimal therapy. The period representation offers benefits in terms of flexibility and reduction in dimensionality compared to the binary representation. The AMmA is a memetic algorithm which employs a list of three local searchers adaptively activated by an evolutionary framework. These local searchers, having different features according to the exploration logic and the pivot rule, have the role of exploring the decision space from different and complementary perspectives and, thus, assisting the standard evolutionary operators in the optimizati…