• Natural Product Sciences
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.1-15
• /
• 2002

An International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) program based at the University of Illinois at Chicago initiated its activities in 1998, with the following specific objectives: (a) inventory and conservation of of plants of Cuc Phuong National Park in Vietnam and of medicinal plants of Laos; (b) drug discovery (and development) based on plants of Vietnam and Laos; and (c) economic development of communities participating in the ICBG project both in Vietnam and Laos. Member-institutions and an industrial partner of this ICBG are bound by a Memorandum of Agreement that recognizes property and intellectual property rights, prior informed consent for access to genetic resources and to indigenous knowledge, the sharing of benefits that may arise from the drug discovery effort, and the provision of short-term and long-term benefits to host country institutions and communities. The drug discovery effort is targeted to the search for agents for therapies against malaria (antimalarial assay of plant extracts, using Plasmodium falciparum clones), AIDS (anti-HIV-l activity using HOG.R5 reporter cell line (through transactivation of the green fluorescent protein/GFP gene), cancer (screening of plant extracts in 6 human tumor cell lines - KB, Col-2, LU-l, LNCaP, HUVEC, hTert-RPEl), tuberculosis (screening of extracts in the microplate Alamar Blue assay against Mycobacterium tuberculosis $H_{37}Ra\;and\;H_{37}Rv),$ all performed at UIC, and CNS-related diseases (with special focus on Alzheimer's disease, pain and rheumatoid arthritis, and asthma), peformed at Glaxo Smith Kline (UK). Source plants were selected based on two approaches: biodiversity-based (plants of Cuc Phuong National Park) and ethnobotany-based (medicinal plants of Cuc Phuong National Park in Vietnam and medicinal plants of Laos). At mc, as of July, 2001, active leads had been identified in the anti-HIV, anticancer, antimalarial, and anti- TB assay, after the screening of more than 800 extracts. At least 25 biologically active compounds have been isolated, 13 of which are new with anti-HIV activity, and 3 also new with antimalarial activity. At GSK of 21 plant samples with a history of use to treat CNS-related diseases tested to date, a number showed activity against one or more of the CNS assay targets used, but no new compounds have been isolated. The results of the drug discovery effort to date indicate that tropical plant diversity of Vietnam and Laos unquestionably harbors biologically active chemical entities, which, through further research, may eventually yield candidates for drug development. Although the substantial monetary benefit of the drug discovery process (royalties) is a long way off, the UIC ICBG program provides direct and real-term benefits to host country institutions and communities.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
• /
• v.30 no.3
• /
• pp.191-199
• /
• 2000

Genomics is providing targets faster than we can validate them and combinatorial chemistry is providing new chemical entities faster than we can screen them. Historically, the drug discovery cascade has been established as a sequential process initiated with a potency screening against a selected biological target. In this sequential process, pharmacokinetics was often regarded as a low-throughput activity. Typically, limited pharmacokinetics studies would be conducted prior to acceptance of a compound for safety evaluation and, as a result, compounds often failed to reach a clinical testing due to unfavorable pharmacokinetic characteristics. A new paradigm in drug discovery has emerged in which the entire sample collection is rapidly screened using robotized high-throughput assays at the outset of the program. Higher-throughput pharmacokinetics (HTPK) is being achieved through introduction of new techniques, including automation for sample preparation and new experimental approaches. A number of in vitro and in vivo methods are being developed for the HTPK. In vitro studies, in which many cell lines are used to screen absorption and metabolism, are generally faster than in vivo screening, and, in this sense, in vitro screening is often considered as a real HTPK. Despite the elegance of the in vitro models, however, in vivo screenings are always essential for the final confirmation. Among these in vivo methods, cassette dosing technique, is believed the methods that is applicable in the screening of pharmacokinetics of many compounds at a time. The widespread use of liquid chromatography (LC) interfaced to mass spectrometry (MS) or tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) allowed the feasibility of the cassette dosing technique. Another approach to increase the throughput of in vivo screening of pharmacokinetics is to reduce the number of sample analysis. Two common approaches are used for this purpose. First, samples from identical study designs but that contain different drug candidate can be pooled to produce single set of samples, thus, reducing sample to be analyzed. Second, for a single test compound, serial plasma samples can be pooled to produce a single composite sample for analysis. In this review, we validated the issue whether the second method can be applied to practical screening of in vivo pharmacokinetics using data from seven of our previous bioequivalence studies. For a given drug, equally spaced serial plasma samples were pooled to achieve a 'Pooled Concentration' for the drug. An area under the plasma drug concentration-time curve (AUC) was then calculated theoretically using the pooled concentration and the predicted AUC value was statistically compared with the traditionally calculated AUC value. The comparison revealed that the sample pooling method generated reasonably accurate AUC values when compared with those obtained by the traditional approach. It is especially noteworthy that the accuracy was obtained by the analysis of only one sample instead of analyses of a number of samples that necessitates a significant man-power and time. Thus, we propose the sample pooling method as an alternative to in vivo pharmacokinetic approach in the selection potential lead(s) from combinatorial libraries.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
• /
• v.28 no.5
• /
• pp.381-388
• /
• 2020

Methamphetamine (METH) is a highly addictive psychostimulant and one of the most widely abused drugs worldwide. The continuous use of METH eventually leads to drug addiction and causes serious health complications, including attention deficit, memory loss and cognitive decline. These neurological complications are strongly associated with METH-induced neurotoxicity and neuroinflammation, which leads to neuronal cell death. The current review investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying METH-mediated neuronal damages. Our analysis demonstrates that the process of neuronal impairment by METH is closely related to oxidative stress, transcription factor activation, DNA damage, excitatory toxicity and various apoptosis pathways. Thus, we reach the conclusion here that METH-induced neuronal damages are attributed to the neurotoxic and neuroinflammatory effect of the drug. This review provides an insight into the mechanisms of METH addiction and contributes to the discovery of therapeutic targets on neurological impairment by METH abuse.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.27 no.5
• /
• pp.878-895
• /
• 2017

Phosphorylation, a critical mechanism in biological systems, is estimated to be indispensable for about 30% of key biological activities, such as cell cycle progression, migration, and division. It is synergistically balanced by kinases and phosphatases, and any deviation from this balance leads to disease conditions. Pathway or biological activity-based abnormalities in phosphorylation and the type of involved phosphatase influence the outcome, and cause diverse diseases ranging from diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and numerous cancers. Protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs) are of prime importance in the process of dephosphorylation and catalyze several biological functions. Abnormal PTP activities are reported to result in several human diseases. Consequently, there is an increased demand for potential PTP inhibitory small molecules. Several strategies in structure-based drug designing techniques for potential inhibitory small molecules of PTPs have been explored along with traditional drug designing methods in order to overcome the hurdles in PTP inhibitor discovery. In this review, we discuss druggable PTPs and structure-based virtual screening efforts for successful PTP inhibitor design.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
• /
• 2014.11a
• /
• pp.849-852
• /
• 2014

Reverse engineering of gene regulatory network is a challenging task in computational biology. To detect a regulatory relationship among genes from time series data is called reverse engineering. Reverse engineering helps to discover the architecture of the underlying gene regulatory network. Besides, it insights into the disease process, biological process and drug discovery. There are many statistical approaches available for reverse engineering of gene regulatory network. In our paper, we propose pairwise mutual information for the reverse engineering of a gene regulatory network from time series data. Firstly, we create random boolean networks by the well-known $Erd{\ddot{o}}s-R{\acute{e}}nyi$ model. Secondly, we generate artificial time series data from that network. Then, we calculate pairwise mutual information for predicting the network. We implement of our system on java platform. To visualize the random boolean network graphically we use cytoscape plugins 2.8.0.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
• /
• v.38 no.3
• /
• pp.183-189
• /
• 2008

The present study compared the feasibility of Caco-2 and MDCK cells as an efficient in-vitro model for the drug classification based on Biopharmaceutics Classification System (BCS) as well as an in-vitro model for drug interactions mediated by P-gp inhibition or P-gp induction. Thirteen model drugs were selected to cover BCS Class I{\sim}IV$ and their membrane permeability values were evaluated in both Caco-2 and MDCK cells. P-gp inhibition studies were conducted by using vinblastine and verapamil in MDCK cells. P-gp induction studies were also performed in MDCK cells using rifampin and the P-gp expression level was determined by western blot analysis. Compared to Caco-2 cells, MDCK cells required shorter period of time to culture cells before running the transport study. Both Caco-2 and MDCK cells exhibited the same rank order relationship between in-vitro permeability values and human permeability values of all tested model compounds, implying that those in-vitro models may be useful in the prediction of human permeability (rank order) of new chemical entities at the early drug discovery stage. However, in the case of BCS drug classification, Caco-2 cells appeared to be more suitable than MDCK cells. P-gp induction by rifampin was negligible in MDCK-cells while MDCK cells appeared to be feasible for P-gp inhibition studies. Taken all together, the present study suggests that Caco-2 cells might be more applicable to the BCS drug classification than MDCK-cells, although MDCK cells may provide some advantage in terms of capacity and speed in early ADME screening process.

• Journal of Integrative Natural Science
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.123-131
• /
• 2023

Breast cancer continues to pose a substantial worldwide health challenge, thereby requiring the development of innovative strategies to discover new therapeutic interventions. Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 3 (STAT-3) has been identified as a significant factor in the development of several types of cancer, including breast cancer. This is primarily attributed to its diverse functions in promoting tumour formation and conferring resistance to therapeutic interventions. This study presents an in silico drug repositioning approach that focuses on identifying specific inhibitors of STAT-3 for the purpose of treating breast cancer. We initially examined the structural and functional attributes of STAT-3, thereby elucidating its crucial involvement in cellular signalling cascades. A comprehensive virtual screening was performed on a diverse collection of drugs that have been approved by the FDA from zinc15 database. Various computational techniques, including molecular docking, cross docking, and cDFT analysis, were utilised in order to prioritise potential candidates. This prioritisation was based on their predicted binding energies and outer molecular orbital reactivity. The findings of our study have unveiled a Dihydroergotamine and Paritaprevir that have been approved by the FDA and exhibit considerable promise as selective inhibitors of STAT-3. In conclusion, the utilisation of our in silico drug repositioning approach presents a prompt and economically efficient method for the identification of potential compounds that warrant subsequent experimental validation as selective STAT-3 inhibitors in the context of breast cancer. The present study highlights the considerable potential of employing computational strategies to expedite the drug discovery process. Moreover, it provides valuable insights into novel avenues for targeted therapeutic interventions in the context of breast cancer treatment.

• Journal of Life Science
• /
• v.25 no.6
• /
• pp.656-662
• /
• 2015

Natural products and natural product structures play a general and highly significant role in drug discovery and development process because it has various merits and potentials for new drug source that have extensive clinical experience, development time contraction, excellent stability and safety. In several neurological disorders, neuronal death and excessive activation of microglia (neuro-inflammation) are observed. A number of drug discovery-related neuronal cell death and neuro-inflammation was studied from natural products, respectively. However, until now, it has not been possible to study dual-protection molecules recorded in the Natural Product library. In the present study, using the natural product-derived library of the Institute for Korea Traditional Medical Industry, we investigated dual-protective molecules against glutamate (a classical excitatory neurotransmitter)-induced oxidative stress mediated neuronal cell death and LPS-induced excessive activated microglial cells (immune cells of the brain). Chrysophanol, extracted from Rheum palmatum, had dual-protective effects against both glutamate-induced neuronal cell death and LPS-induced NO production, triggering proinflammatory cytokines and microglia activation and resulting in neuroinflammation. Flow-cytometry analysis revealed that chrysophanol had a scavenger effect, scavenging glutamate- and LPS-induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by neuronal and microglial cells, respectively. Based on the present study, chrysophanol may have an important protective role against neuronal cell death and neuroinflammation in the brain. The results may be helpful for studying drug development candidates for treating central nervous system disorders.

• Journal of Life Science
• /
• v.18 no.9
• /
• pp.1312-1315
• /
• 2008

High throughput-drug screening plays a pivotal role for early stage of drug discovery process. In the course of assay development for screening of cell death-inducing agents, a protocol that is simple, time-saving, and high throughput-compatible was designed which was confirmed that the protocol can be worked by a HTS-compatible machine. In 96-well format, PC-3 cancer cells (1${\times}10^{4}$ cells/ml) were cultured for 24 hr. After 24 h-incubation with various medicinal plants extracts, the cells were then stained with DAPI for 30 min. The fluorescence intensity of the stained cells was measured semi-automatically with a multilabel counter. To test whether the present assay system effectively works, we screened about 850 medicinal plant extracts, and selected 1 positive crude extracts that contained cell death-inducing activity. These results suggest that the protocol is highly amenable to HTS implementation for a cell death-inducing agent(s).

• Proceedings of the PSK Conference
• /
• 2003.04a
• /
• pp.249.1-249.1
• /
• 2003

The Korea Chemical Bank (KCB) has more than 80,000 compound collections. provided from many companies, academies and institutes. KCB has supported high-throughput screening (HTS) against 80 biological targets and identified a number of hits over 20 targets. These hits were first validated by confirming the purity and novelty of anticipated compound. We also determined their physiochemical properties. (omitted)