With the rapidly growing body of biostructural information, structure-based drug design has increased in importance and a variety of computational methods have found a place in the drug discovery toolkit. The de novo design program, SkelGen, was developed by De…
Blog Archives
Targeting Orphan Receptors for Multiple Sclerosis
Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute have reported on compounds that are able to suppress severity and disease progression in animal models of multiple sclerosis. The compounds, exemplified by SR1001, act by selectively suppressing a subset of T-helper cells characterised…
Role for c-Abl in Parkinson’s Disease
The majority of Parkinson’s disease (PD) cases have no known cause, but have been associated with increased oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction. Of the small proportion of hereditary cases, a number of defective genes have been identified including LRRK2 (PARK8),…
A Histidine Kinase as a Target for Autoimmune Diseases
The nucleoside diphosphate kinases (NDPK) comprise a family of 10 members encoded by the Nme (non-metatstatic cell) gene family. These kinases are capable of transferring the γ-phosphate of nucleoside triphosphates to nucleoside diphosphates, which is accomplished via a phospho-histidine intermediate.…
The BMK1 Pathway in Oncology – a Road Less Travelled
Of the four mammalian MAP kinase pathways (ERK1/2, JNK, p38 and BMK1), BMK1 is the least studied. BMK1 and ERK1/2 pathways are both activated by mitogens and oncogenic signals and are therefore implicated in tumorigenesis. Indeed, the ERK1/2 pathway has…
Speeding the Cellular Waste Disposal System
The ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) is a critical element of the cellular machinery, responsible for removing unwanted proteins. Target proteins, which may be misfolded, oxidised or simply no longer required, are marked for degradation by attachment of ubiquitin chains. The ubiquitinated…
What’s the Structure of……??
For those who haven’t encountered it yet, chemicalize.org is a tool for adding chemical information to your web browsing – and it’s free! Provided by the chemistry software company, ChemAxon, under a Creative Commons license, chemicalize can convert chemical names…
Low-Fat or Low-Carb?
There has long been debate about the relative merits of a low-carbohydrate diet, as popularised by Atkins, compared to the more traditional low-fat approach to weight loss. A low-carbohydrate diet has also been anecdotally associated with adverse effects on health.…
Illuminating the Link between Bone and Metabolism
Two back-to-back studies published in the July 23rd issue of Cell, one from Columbia University Medical Center and the other from Johns Hopkins researchers, further the hypothesis that metabolic control and bone remodelling are inextricably linked. Both studies point to…
Arsenic Gets Nanotechnology Treatment
Despite its reputation as a poison, arsenic has long been used in Chinese medicine and, more recently, arsenic trioxide has been successfully used to treat acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APL). The drug has poor activity against solid tumours, however, probably because…
