Search results for "Small Molecule"
showing 10 items of 197 documents
Chromatin remodeling regulation by small molecules and metabolites.
2010
The eukaryotic genome is a highly organized nucleoprotein structure comprising of DNA, histones, non-histone proteins, and RNAs, referred to as chromatin. The chromatin exists as a dynamic entity, shuttling between the open and closed forms at specific nuclear regions and loci based on the requirement of the cell. This dynamicity is essential for the various DNA-templated phenomena like transcription, replication, and repair and is achieved through the activity of ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling complexes and covalent modifiers of chromatin. A growing body of data indicates that chromatin enzymatic activities are finely and specifically regulated by a variety of small molecules derived f…
Small molecule DNA-PK inhibitors as potential cancer therapy: a patent review (2010–present)
2021
Introduction: DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK) plays a crucial role in the repair of DSBs via non-homologous end joining (NHEJ). Several DNA-PK inhibitors are being investigated for potential anticancer treatment in clinical trials.Area covered: This review aims to give an overview of patents published since 2010 by analyzing the patent space and structure features of scaffolds used in those patents. It also discusses the recent clinical developments and provides perspectives on future challenges and directions in this field.Expert opinion: As a key component of the DNA damage response (DDR) pathway, DNA-PK appears to be a viable drug target for anticancer therapy. The clinical investi…
Atom- and Bond-Based 2D TOMOCOMD-CARDD Approach and Ligand-Based Virtual Screening for the Drug Discovery of New Tyrosinase Inhibitors
2008
Two-dimensional atom- and bond-based TOMOCOMD-CARDD descriptors and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) are used in this report to perform a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) study of tyrosinase-inhibitory activity. A database of inhibitors of the enzyme is collected for this study, within 246 highly dissimilar molecules presenting antityrosinase activity. In total, 7 discriminant functions are obtained by using the whole set of atom- and bond-based 2D indices. All the LDA-based QSAR models show accuracies above 90% in the training set and values of the Matthews correlation coefficient (C) varying from 0.85 to 0.90. The external validation set shows globally good classifica…
Diffusion of small molecules in edible films: Effect of water and interactions between diffusant and biopolymer
2008
Mass transfers of various molecules in multiphasic food products lead to quality modification and thus require the use of edible films or coatings in-between the foodstuff. Consequently, it is important to assess the barrier properties and efficiencies of edible films as well as to determine the diffusivities of the migrants. Translational diffusion of a reference molecule such as fluorescein, determined by the fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) method, displays a threshold of a critical water content inducing an increase of the molecular mobility, and demonstrates that multiple populations of a single molecular specie can be involved in different diffusion kinetics. Further …
Rupture Force of Single Small Drug Molecule Binding a Split Aptamer
2012
Aptamers are specific oligonucleotides (DNA or RNA) which bind small inorganic or organic molecules, large proteins or cells. In particular, the high affinity of aptamers is expected to lead to a new class of therapeutic reagents. Thus the detection and characterization of binding strength of small molecules is important for drug and medical research. Atomic force spectroscopy (AFS) with a force resolution in the piconewton range is a valuable tool for studying interactions on a single molecular level. The detection of very small target molecules less than 500 Dalton is characterized by only a few hydrogen interactions between the aptamer and the target molecules. Thus tiny rupture forces w…
Selected Secondary Plant Metabolites for Cancer Therapy
2015
Secondary plant metabolites reveal numerous biological activities making them attractive as resource for drug development of human diseases. As the majority of cancer drugs clinically established during the past half century is derived from nature, cancer researchers worldwide try to identify novel natural products as lead compounds for cancer therapy. Natural products are considered as promising cancer therapeutics, either as single agents or in combination protocols, to enhance the antitumor activity of additional therapeutic modalities. Most natural compounds exert pleotrophic effects and modulate various signal transduction pathways. A better understanding of the complex mechanisms of a…
Drug insight: novel small molecules and drugs for immunosuppression.
2006
Gastrointestinal diseases can result from the inadequate or excessive response of the immune system to self or innocuous antigens. Moreover, the physiologic activation of the immune system against non-self antigens is a major clinical problem in liver organ transplantation. At present, many drugs are available that suppress the activation of the immune system, although most of the currently used immunosuppressive drugs lack specificity in terms of their molecular targets and, therefore, have the potential to generate numerous side effects. The advances that have been made in understanding the molecular events that underlie the activation of the immune system have led to the development of a…
Inhibition of FTSJ1, a tryptophan tRNA-specific 2’-O-methyltransferase as possible mechanism to readthrough premature termination codons (UGAs) of th…
2022
Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is an autosomal recessive genetic disease caused by mutations in the CFTR gene, coding for the CFTR chloride channel. About 10 % of the mutations affecting the CFTR gene are "stop" mutations, which generate a Premature Termination Codon (PTC), thus resulting in the synthesis of a truncated CFTR protein. A way to bypass PTC relies on ribosome readthrough, that is the capacity of the ribosome to skip a PTC, thus generating a full-length protein. “TRIDs” are molecules exerting ribosome readthrough and for some of them the mechanism of action is still under debate. By in silico analysis as well as in vitro studies, we investigate a possible mechanism of action (MOA) by whic…
A phase Ib study of the Akt inhibitor GDC-0068 with docetaxel (D) or mFOLFOX-6 (F) in patients (pts) with advanced solid tumors.
2012
3021 Background: Activation of the Akt pathway is observed in multiple tumors and may contribute to chemoresistance. GDC-0068 is an ATP-competitive small molecule inhibitor of all three isoforms of Akt; in a phase Ia study, it was well tolerated with maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of 600 mg daily (21 days on/7days off) and pharmacodynamic down-regulation of Akt signaling in tumors at doses ≥100 mg. In vitro, GDC-0068 shows synergism with cytotoxic agents. This phase Ib study defines the dose limiting toxicities (DLT), MTD, safety and pharmacokinetics (PK) of GDC0068 in combination with D and F. Methods: Using a 3+3 designeligible patients (pt) with advanced/metastatic solid tumors were treat…
Squaric Acid Mediated Synthesis and Biological Activity of a Library of Linear and Hyperbranched Poly(Glycerol)-Protein Conjugates
2012
Polymer-protein conjugates generated from side chain functional synthetic polymers are attractive because they can be easily further modified with, for example, labeling groups or targeting ligands. The residue specific modification of proteins with side chain functional synthetic polymers using the traditional coupling strategies may be compromised due to the nonorthogonality of the side-chain and chain-end functional groups of the synthetic polymer, which may lead to side reactions. This study explores the feasibility of the squaric acid diethyl ester mediated coupling as an amine selective, hydroxyl tolerant, and hydrolysis insensitive route for the preparation of side-chain functional, …