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Diverse Class (diverse + class)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Chemistry	50%
Medical Sciences	33%

Selected Abstracts

Recent Approaches to Antifungal Therapy for Invasive Mycoses

CHEMMEDCHEM, Issue 3 2009
Bijoy
Abstract Antimycotic agents: Diverse classes of antimycotic drugs have been developed over the past decades with the goal of improving selectivity and efficacy. This review discusses both conventional and novel targets for antifungal agents and the possibility of vaccination in the treatment of invasive fungal infections. Invasive fungal infections with primary and opportunistic mycoses have become increasingly common in recent years and pose a major diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. They represent a major area of concern in today's medical fraternity. The occurrence of invasive fungal diseases, particularly in AIDS and other immunocompromised patients, is life-threatening and increases the economic burden. Apart from the previously known polyenes and imidazole-based azoles, newly discovered triazoles and echinocandins are more effective in terms of specificity, yet some immunosuppressed hosts are difficult to treat. The main reasons for this include antifungal resistance, toxicity, lack of rapid and microbe-specific diagnoses, poor penetration of drugs into sanctuary sites, and lack of oral or intravenous preparations. In addition to combination antifungal therapy, other novel antimycotic treatments such as calcineurin signaling pathway blockers and vaccines have recently emerged. This review briefly summarizes recent developments in the pharmacotherapeutic treatment of invasive fungal infections. [source]

Neoadjuvant treatment of soft-tissue sarcoma: A multimodality approach

JOURNAL OF SURGICAL ONCOLOGY, Issue 4 2010
David Reynoso BS
Abstract Unlike epithelial cancers that are both more homogeneous and easily categorized by their respective tissues of origin (e.g., breast or lung cancer), sarcomas represent a diverse class of molecularly distinct bone and soft-tissue mesenchymal neoplasms of more than 50 subtypes. This diversity, as well as the relative rarity of sarcomas as a whole, has presented challenges in conducting prospective randomized clinical trials to assess the value of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for any given subtype. Most clinical trials and meta-analyses have neglected the phenotypic and molecular heterogeneity differentiating one sarcoma subtype from another in favor of a simplified grouping that ensures timely trial completion. As the success of treating gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) with imatinib demonstrates, a decision to provide neoadjuvant chemotherapy must take into consideration both the subtype being treated and the effect such treatment would be expected to exert upon that subtype. J. Surg. Oncol. 2010; 101:327,333. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

The abuse of diuretics as performance-enhancing drugs and masking agents in sport doping: pharmacology, toxicology and analysis

BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY, Issue 1 2010
Amy B Cadwallader
Diuretics are drugs that increase the rate of urine flow and sodium excretion to adjust the volume and composition of body fluids. There are several major categories of this drug class and the compounds vary greatly in structure, physicochemical properties, effects on urinary composition and renal haemodynamics, and site and mechanism of action. Diuretics are often abused by athletes to excrete water for rapid weight loss and to mask the presence of other banned substances. Because of their abuse by athletes, diuretics have been included on The World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) list of prohibited substances; the use of diuretics is banned both in competition and out of competition and diuretics are routinely screened for by anti-doping laboratories. This review provides an overview of the pharmacology and toxicology of diuretics and discusses their application in sports. The most common analytical strategies currently followed by the anti-doping laboratories accredited by the WADA are discussed along with the challenges laboratories face for the analysis of this diverse class of drugs. [source]

Photocaged Agonist for an Analogue-Specific form of the Vitamin D Receptor

CHEMBIOCHEM, Issue 7 2007
John B. Biggins Dr.
Abstract Nuclear hormone receptors (NHRs) represent a diverse class of ligand-dependent transcriptional regulators. NHRs that have been rendered functionally inactive due to mutations that abrogate proper ligand binding can often be rescued by appropriately designed hormone analogues. The analogue-specific receptor,ligand pairs provide an ideal platform from which to develop new chemogenomic tools for the spatial and temporal control of gene expression. Here, we describe the synthesis and in vitro assessment of a photocaged VDR agonist specific to a mutant NHR that is associated with vitamin D-resistant rickets. The results provide insight into the utility of the agonist as a potential tool for photoinduced gene patterning. [source]

An Electrophilicity Based Analysis of Toxicity of Aromatic Compounds Towards Tetrahymena Pyriformis

MOLECULAR INFORMATICS, Issue 2 2006
R. Roy
Abstract Electrophilicity index is one of the important quantum chemical descriptors in describing toxicity or biological activities of the diverse classes of chemicals to bio-systems in the context of development of Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship (QSAR). In this study a large number of selected 174 aromatic compounds containing phenols, nitrobenzenes and benzonitriles are chosen as the training set to verify their toxic potency to Tetrahymena pyriformis in the light of electrophilicity. A systematic analysis has been made to find out the electron donation/acceptance nature of these model compounds by comparing their electronegativity values with those of the NA bases/DNA base pairs. The training sets are classified into two groups, viz., the electron donor group comprising 97 phenol derivatives and the electron acceptor group consisting of 77 nitrobenzenes and benzonitriles grouped together. Regression analysis in terms of correlation coefficient (), variance adjusted to degrees of freedom () and variance of leave-one-out cross-validation () has been made for both the electron donor and acceptor aromatic groups to predict the toxicity values of these model compounds to Tetrahymena pyriformis. It is heartening to note that the global and local electrophilicity indices along with the total Hartree-Fock energy can explain more than 80% of cross-validation variance of data of those aromatic molecules. [source]

Transcriptional profiling of hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) roots identifies novel, dehydration-responsive genes

PLANT CELL & ENVIRONMENT, Issue 5 2007
MOHSEN MOHAMMADI
ABSTRACT We used a long-oligonucleotide microarray to identify transcripts that increased or decreased in abundance in roots of dehydration-tolerant hexaploid bread wheat, in response to withholding of water. We observed that the major classes of dehydration-responsive genes (e.g. osmoprotectants, compatible solutes, proteases, glycosyltransferases/hydrolases, signal transducers components, ion transporters) were generally similar to those observed previously in other species and osmotic stresses. More specifically, we highlighted increases in transcript expression for specific genes including those putatively related to the synthesis of asparagine, trehalose, oligopeptide transporters, metal-binding proteins, the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) shunt and transcription factors. Conversely, we noted a decrease in transcript abundance for diverse classes of glutathione and sulphur-related enzymes, specific amino acids, as well as MATE-efflux carrier proteins. From these data, we identified a novel, dehydration-induced putative AP2/ERF transcription factor, which we predict to function as a transcriptional repressor. We also identified a dehydration-induced ,little protein' (LitP; predicted mass: 8 kDa) that is highly conserved across spermatophytes. Using qRT-PCR, we compared the expression patterns of selected genes between two related wheat genotypes that differed in their susceptibility to dehydration, and confirmed that these novel genes were highly inducible by water limitation in both genotypes, although the magnitude of induction differed. [source]