The increasing resistance of microorganisms to conventional chemicals and drugs is a serious and evident worldwide problem that has prompted research into the identification of new biocides with broad activity. Plants and their derivatives, such as e...
The rapid increase in drug-resistant infections has presented a serious challenge to antimicrobial therapies. The failure of the most potent antibiotics to kill “superbugs” emphasizes the urgent need to develop other control agents. Here we review th...
Antibiotics have revolutionized medicine, saving countless lives since their discovery in the early 20th century. However, the origin of antibiotics is now overshadowed by the alarming rise in antibiotic resistance. This global crisis stems from the...
Since ancient times, folk medicine and agro-food science have benefitted from the use of plant derivatives, such as essential oils, to combat different diseases, as well as to preserve food. In Nature, essential oils play a fundamental role in protec...
Naringenin is a flavonoid belonging to flavanones subclass. It is widely distributed in several Citrus fruits, bergamot, tomatoes and other fruits, being also found in its glycosides form (mainly naringin). Several biological activities have been asc...
Quercetin, a flavonoid found in fruits and vegetables, has been a part of human diets for centuries. Its numerous health benefits, including antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and anticancer properties, have been extensively st...
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the drug discovery process, offering improved efficiency, accuracy, and speed. However, the successful application of AI is dependent on the availability of high-quality data, the addres...
Natural products have played a critical role in medicine due to their ability to bind and modulate cellular targets involved in disease. Medicinal plants hold a variety of bioactive scaffolds for the treatment of multiple disorders. The less adverse...
For a bacteriophage to be useful for phage therapy it must be both isolated from the environment and shown to have certain characteristics beyond just killing strains of the target bacterial pathogen. These include desirable characteristics such as a...
As the key components of innate immunity, human host defense antimicrobial peptides and proteins (AMPs) play a critical role in warding off invading microbial pathogens. In addition, AMPs can possess other biological functions such as apoptosis, woun...
Plant antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have evolved differently from AMPs from other life forms. They are generally rich in cysteine residues which form multiple disulfides. In turn, the disulfides cross-braced plant AMPs as cystine-rich peptides to con...
Bones play an important role in maintaining exercise and protecting organs. Bone defect, as a common orthopedic disease in clinics, can cause tremendous damage with long treatment cycles. Therefore, the treatment of bone defect remains as one of the...
Chronic wounds often occur in patients with diabetes mellitus due to the impairment of wound healing. This has negative consequences for both the patient and the medical system and considering the growing prevalence of diabetes, it will be a signific...
This study aims to provide an updated survey of the main synthesis methods of copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles in order to obtain tailored nanosystems for various biomedical applications. The synthesis approach significantly impacts the properties of...
As the first radiopharmaceutical for Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy (PRRT), Lutathera® was approved by the EMA in 2017 and the FDA in 2018 for the treatment of somatostatin receptor (SSTR) positive gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tum...
Nuclear receptor coactivator 4 (NCOA4) is a selective cargo receptor that mediates the autophagic degradation of ferritin (“ferritinophagy”), the cytosolic iron storage complex. NCOA4-mediated ferritinophagy maintains intracellular iron h...
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have remarkably different structures as well as biological activity profiles, whereupon most of these peptides are supposed to kill bacteria via membrane damage. In order to understand their molecular mechanism and targe...
Cancer is one of the major healthcare challenges across the globe. Several anticancer drugs are available on the market but they either lack specificity or have poor safety, severe side effects, and suffer from resistance. So, there is a dire need to...
Computer-aided drug discovery techniques reduce the time and the costs needed to develop novel drugs. Their relevance becomes more and more evident with the needs due to health emergencies as well as to the diffusion of personalized medicine. Pharmac...
Curcumin, a principal bioactive substance of turmeric (Curcuma longa L.), is reported as a strong antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral agent. However, its antimicrobial properties require further detailed investiga...
Cell penetrating peptides (CPPs) can deliver cell-impermeable therapeutic cargos into cells. In particular, CPP-cargo conjugates tend to accumulate inside cells by endocytosis. However, they often remain trapped inside endocytic organelles and fail t...
The HDAC inhibitors are a new family of antineoplastic agents. Since the entry of these agents into our therapeutic armamentarium, there has been increasing interest in their use. Although this family comprises chemical compounds from unrelated chemi...
The detection of prostate cancer lesions by PET imaging of the prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) has gained highest clinical impact during the last years. 68Ga-labelled Glu-urea-Lys(Ahx)-HBED-CC ([68Ga]Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC) represents a successfu...
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are found widely distributed through Nature, and participate in the innate host defense of each species. Fish are a great source of these peptides, as they express all of the major classes of AMPs, including defensins,...
In the dynamic landscape of drug discovery, Computer-Aided Drug Design (CADD) emerges as a transformative force, bridging the realms of biology and technology. This paper overviews CADDs historical evolution, categorization into structure-based and l...
An armed antibody (antibody–drug conjugate or ADC) is a vectorized chemotherapy, which results from the grafting of a cytotoxic agent onto a monoclonal antibody via a judiciously constructed spacer arm. ADCs have made considerable progress in 1...
In March 2022, [177Lu]Lu-PSMA-617 (PluvictoTM) was approved by the FDA for the treatment of prostate cancer patients. Until now, the approval has been limited to patients with PSMA-positive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer who have pre...
Neurodegenerative diseases are increasing in number, given that the general global population is becoming older. They manifest themselves through mechanisms that are not fully understood, in many cases, and impair memory, cognition and movement. Curr...
Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is the most widespread form of diabetes, characterized by chronic hyperglycaemia, insulin resistance, and inefficient insulin secretion and action. Primary care in T2DM is pharmacological, using drugs of several groups...
Metal ion complexes are playing an increasing role in the development of antimicrobials. We review here the antimicrobial properties of cobalt coordination complexes in oxidation state 3+. In addition to reviewing the cobalt complexes containing poly...
Nowadays, cancer is one of the deadliest diseases in the world, which has been estimated to cause 9.9 million deaths in 2020. Conventional treatments for cancer commonly involve mono-chemotherapy or a combination of radiotherapy and mono-chemotherapy...
It is over 50 years since the discovery of microtubules, and they have become one of the most important drug targets for anti-cancer therapies. Microtubules are predominantly composed of the protein tubulin, which contains a number of different bindi...
Metal nanoparticles (NPs) have garnered considerable attention, due to their unique physicochemical properties, that render them promising candidates for various applications in medicine and industry. This article offers a comprehensive overview of t...
Iron (Fe) is a highly ample metal on planet earth (~35% of the Earth’s mass) and is particularly essential for most life forms, including from bacteria to mammals. Nonetheless, iron deficiency is highly prevalent in developing countries, and or...
Heat shock proteins (HSPs) play cytoprotective activities under pathological conditions through the initiation of protein folding, repair, refolding of misfolded peptides, and possible degradation of irreparable proteins. Excessive apoptosis, resulti...
From 2006 to 2011, an average of 15 novel recombinant protein therapeutics have been approved by US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) annually. In addition, the expiration of blockbuster biologics has also spurred the emergence of biosimilars. The i...
Opioids are widely used as therapeutic agents against moderate to severe acute and chronic pain. Still, these classes of analgesic drugs have many potential limitations as they induce analgesic tolerance, addiction and numerous behavioural adverse ef...
Angiogenesis in normal and pathological conditions is a multi-step process governed by positive and negative endogenous regulators. Many growth factors are involved in different steps of angiogenesis, like vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGF),...
The successful clinical application of nucleic acid-based therapeutic strategies has been limited by the poor delivery efficiency achieved by existing vectors. The development of alternative delivery systems for improved biological activity is, there...
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and interaction and restricted-repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. Strong inflammation states are associated with ASD. This inflamma...
In recent years, biodegradable polymers have gained the attention of many researchers for their promising applications, especially in drug delivery, due to their good biocompatibility and designable degradation time. Poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (P...
The extraction of bioactive compounds of pharmaceutical interest from natural sources has been significantly explored in recent decades. However, the extraction techniques used were not very efficient in terms of time and energy consumption; addition...
Heparin, the most widely used anticoagulant drug in the world today, remains an animal-derived product with the attendant risks of adulteration and contamination. A contamination crisis in 2007–2008 increased the impetus to provide non-animal-derived...
Inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) are the most effective controllers of asthma. They suppress inflammation mainly by switching off multiple activated inflammatory genes through reversing histone acetylation via the recruitment of histone deacetylase 2 (H...
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common and complex mental disorder, that adversely impacts an individual’s quality of life, but its diagnosis and treatment are not accurately executed and a symptom-based approach is utilized in most cases,...
The oral route is the most common and practical means of drug administration, particularly from a patient’s perspective. However, the pharmacokinetic profile of oral drugs depends on the rate of drug absorption through the intestinal wall befor...
In recent years, the consumption of natural-based foods, including beans, fruits, legumes, nuts, oils, vegetables, spices, and whole grains, has been encouraged. This fact is essentially due to their content in bioactive phytochemicals, with the phen...
Pickering emulsions are systems composed of two immiscible fluids stabilized by organic or inorganic solid particles. These solid particles of certain dimensions (micro- or nano-particles), and desired wettability, have been shown to be an alternativ...
Antimicrobial agents have eradicated many infectious diseases and significantly improved our living environment. However, abuse of antimicrobial agents has accelerated the emergence of multidrug-resistant microorganisms, and there is an urgent need f...
The RNA interference (RNAi) pathway possesses immense potential in silencing any gene in human cells. Small interfering RNA (siRNA) can efficiently trigger RNAi silencing of specific genes. FDA Approval of siRNA therapeutics in recent years garnered...
