• Journal of Marine Bioscience and Biotechnology
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.209-223
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• 2007

Nature is one of the most important sources of pharmacologically active compounds in the search for drugs against life threatening diseases. Even though plants and terrestrial microorganisms have played as an important source for the new drug candidates from nature, marine organisms such as tunicates, sponges, soft corals, sea horses, sea snakes, marine mollusks, seaweeds, nudibranches, sea slugs and marine microorganisms are increasingly attracting attention in recent years. Marine organisms also have the potential to develop into future drugs against important diseases, such as cancer, a range of bacterial and viral diseases, malaria, and inflammations. Even though the mechanism of action in the molecular level of most metabolites is still unclear, the mechanisms by which they interfere with the pathogenesis of a wide range of diseases have been reported. The knowledge of this is one of the key factors necessary to develop bioactive compounds into medicines. This is due to their structurally unique and pharmacologically active compounds. The potential pharmaceutical, medicinal and research applications of some of these compounds are discussed in hundreds of scientific papers, and are reviewed here.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2016.05a
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• pp.715-717
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• 2016

Conventional drug carriers such as liposomes, nanoparticles, polymer micelles, polymeric conjugate and lipid microemulsion for cancer chemotherapy shield normal tissues from toxic drugs to treat cancer cells in tumors. However, inaccurate tumor targeting uncontrolled drug release from the carriers and unwanted accumulation in healthy sites can limit treatment efficacy with current conventional drug carriers with insufficient concentrations of drugs in the tumors and unexpected side effects as a result. In this research, we examined the use of sickle red blood cells as a new drug carrier with novel tumor targeting and controlled release properties. Sickle red blood cells show natural tumor preferential accumulation without any manipulation and controlled drug release is possible using a hemolysis method with photosensitizers.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.27-35
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• 1981

Etomidoline is a new synthetic atropine-like drug. The present investigation aimed to study the combined effects of etomidoline and neofopam hydrochloride which has an analgesic and muscle relaxant activity, compared with the effects of each drugs. Acute toxicities (ID$_{50}$) in mouse were 132mg/Kg (p.o.) and 49mg/Kg (i.p.) when combination ratio of etomidoline and neofopam was 1:5 and 103 mg/Kg (p.o.) and 30mg/Kg (i.p.) with the ratio of 1:10. Etomidoline showed more potent anticholinergic effects than neofopam in the isolated rat intestine. Whereas, antibarium effects were twice as active with neofopam than with etomidoline. When etomidoline and neofopam were added in combination ratio of 1 : 5, papaverine-like avtivity was increased, but no changes of anticholinergic effect were observed. Analgesic effect was measured by the anti-writhing method of Whittle in mice. Both of the concurrent and single administration of etomidoline and nefopam reduced significantly the writhing number and the effect of the concurrent administration was more active than that of single, and 1 : 5 combination was slightly more potent than 1:10. Each drug or the combined drug was administered to mice and observed the change of the pupil size. Pupil sizes were increased with each drug and with combined drug, although there were no significant differences between the each group of drugs. However, those effects were less than that of atropine sulfate.e.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.26-35
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• 2003

Conventional antipsychotics are commonly used to treat children and adolescents suffered from schizophrenia to other neuropsychiatric conditions. Regrettably, studies for typical antipsychotics report high rates of sedation, orthostatic hypotension, and extrapyramidal side effects. Over the past few years, atypical antipsychotics have been prescribed for use in adults with psychotic symptoms. Child psychiatrists have begun using these drugs to children and adolescents hoping safe and better alternatives to the conventional antipsychotics. However, there is not enough short-term and almost no long-term data about atypical antipsychotics for pediatric patients. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to review what is known about the use of the atypical antipsychotics in young patients. To do so, an appropriate approach to the use of these drugs in child and adolescent patients my be offered.

• Korean Journal of Oriental Medicine
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2002

Inflammation is a disease that continues to afflict large numbers of people and may cause other diseases, for example, rheumatoid arthritis, colon cancer, etc. prostaglandins(PGs), one of arachidonic acid metabolites, are major chemical mediators in the process of inflammation. In traditional herbal medicine, many kinds of herbal drugs have been widely used for the treatment of inflammation. So, we analyzed many publications until 2001 which worked on inhibition of $PGE_2$ synthesis by cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) with herbs and herb oriented single compounds. And then we tried to make interpretations of herbal traditional prescriptions for inflammation. There are significant correlations between herbal medicine prescribed and inhibitions of COX-2 activity. From our efforts and further researches, we expect to develop new-inflammatory herbal drugs which have more efficacy and fewer side effects.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.317-320
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• 2003

Genome-wide systematic deletion mutants were generated using a PCR-based targeted mutagenesis of Schizosacchaaromyces pombe. In a drug-sensitivity assay using thiabendazole(TBZ), an inhibitor of microtubule assembly, a heterozygous nda2 mutant ($nda2^+/nda2^-$), deleting one copy of nda2 encoding the microtubule subunit alpha1 demonstrated a distinct sensitivity to TBZ, indicating TBZ-induced haploinsufficiency. This result suggests that profiling drug-induced haploinsufficiency can be exploited to identify target genes for drugs and discover new drugs.

• Annals of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.15-26
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• 2017

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes (T2D) is increasing worldwide. Patients with T2D suffer from various diabetes-related complications. Since there are many patients with T2D that cannot be controlled by previously developed drugs, it has been necessary to develop new drugs, one of which is a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) based therapy. GLP-1 has been shown to ameliorate diabetes-related conditions by augmenting pancreatic ${\beta}-cell$ insulin secretion and having the low risk of causing hypoglycemia. Because of a very short half-life of GLP-1, many researches have been focused on the development of GLP-1 receptor (GLP-1R) agonists with long half-lives such as exenatide and dulaglutide. Now GLP-1R agonists have a variety of dosing-cycle forms to meet the needs of various patients. In this article, we review the physiological features of GLP-1, the effects of GLP-1 on T2D, the features of several GLP-1R agonists, and the therapeutic effect on T2D.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.43-54
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• 2013

Viral hepatitis is the inflammation of liver cells caused by viruses, and still one of the major health-care problems worldwide. A number of viruses to cause hepatitis are type A, B, C, D, E or G. Among these viruses leading to hepatitis, B and C are more troublesome being more prone to chronic illness which can cause the potentially fatal conditions of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and/or liver failure. If immediate treatment is not initiated, liver transplant is the only option left. Over the past few decades there has been remarkable progress in diagnose and monitor all hepatitis virus infections for treatment and prevention. Nonetheless, important challenges remain to develop more effective and safe vaccines for prevention as well as antiviral agents to reduce viremia/viral load by inhibiting viral replication. The development and evaluation of antiviral agents through carefully designed clinical trials over the last 25 years has heralded a new dawn in the treatment of patients chronically infected with the hepatitis B and C viruses, but not so for the D virus. The introduction of Direct Acting Antivirals (DDAs) for the treatment of HBV carriers has permitted the long term use of these compounds for the continuous suppression of viral replication. This review aims to summarize the current status and development approaches of antiviral drugs for the treatment of viral hepatitis and future perspectives.

• Journal of Digestive Cancer Reports
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.65-70
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• 2020

Although being one of the major causes of malignancy related death globally, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has not received much attention in respect of novel drug development. Fortunately, several new drugs were found to be effective and tolerable in patients with advanced HCC from a number of phase 3 studies during the recent several years. Novel multi-targeted kinase inhibitors and immune checkpoint inhibitors were approved for clinical use, and combination strategies to maximize the potent of drugs demonstrated promising antitumor activity and safety with high response rate and improved safety profile. The increased number of available agents for HCC will contribute to change of treatment strategies and prognosis of patients with advanced HCC. Still, there is a many critical questions remain unanswered. Currently ongoing trials and future studies will provide better understanding of tumor biology and optimized criteria for patient selection and combination therapies.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.28-40
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• 2014

Objectives: Prescriptions for Parkinson's can be dispensed at the outpatient pharmacy. In general, the treatment of Parkinson's disease requires a multitude of drugs, sometimes taken 4 to 6 times a day at specific times as prescribed by the medical practitioner. Said "time-specific therapy" is one of the major reasons of dispensing delay observed at the outpatient pharmacy. Because our establishment lacked a computerized system to support time-specific prescriptions, they were not recognized electronically. They had to be issued and dispensed manually, which required a greater amount of time than the automated process. To solve the problem, a new sig code was developed to handle time-specific prescriptions with a comprehensive automated dispensing system to support it. This study aims to create electronic programs and streamline the process to increase dispensing performance. And thus, ensure greater patient safety and dispensing accuracy within a shorter dispensing time and also increase employee satisfaction through a decreased workload. Methods: After identifying the problems caused by non-electronic prescriptions an automated system that allowed the issuance of time-specific prescriptions was developed. A new sig code was created that could be recognized by the Pharmacy electronic medical program, the label printer to group medications by administration times and the Automatic Tablet Counter(ATC) to count the grouped drugs accordingly. Result: With the new sig code, the practitioner became able to electronically select the times of drug administration while issuing the prescription. This 'time-specific prescription' can now be recognized by the pharmacy electronic medical program, the label printer and the ATC like any other prescription. Conclusion: The developed program started operating on September 2013. Although not all Parkinson's patients have been issued with the new electronic 'time-specific prescription', the overall dispensing process has become more streamlined and accurate. As the medical team continues to integrate the new system in their practice an additional decrease of the dispensing time is predicted. Future program upgrades and other new time-saving approaches are scheduled, which are expected to further increase the service quality of our outpatient pharmacy.