Published in Current drug targets
Better understanding of the effect of ageing on mitochondrial metabolism and of the mechanisms of action of various drugs is required to allow optimization of the treatment of many diseases with minimized risk of dangerous impairment of mitochondrial function. Numerous reports show that efficacy of medical treatment depends on the age of treated su...
Published in Current drug targets
Insulin resistant individuals manifest multiple disturbances in free fatty acids metabolism and have excessive lipid accumulation in insulin-target tissues. A wide range of evidence suggests that defective muscle mitochondrial metabolism, and subsequent impaired ability to oxidize fatty acids, may be a causative factor in the accumulation of intram...
Published in Current drug targets
Metabolic regulation is largely dependent on mitochondria, which play an important role in energy homeostasis. Imbalance between energy intake and expenditure leads to mitochondrial dysfunction, characterized by a reduced ratio of energy production (ATP production) to respiration. Due to the role of mitochondrial factors/events in several apoptotic...
Published in Current drug targets
Mitochondria are central regulators of neuronal homeostasis and survival, and increasingly viewed as a drug target in several acute and chronic neurological disorders, e.g. stroke, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases. Frequent working hypotheses aim to establish whether and how chemical or genetic lesions affect mitochondrial functi...
Published in Current drug targets
Mild mitochondrial uncoupling, or the reduction of the efficiency of energy conversion without compromising intracellular high energy phosphate levels, is a protective therapeutic strategy under many laboratory conditions. Here we discuss these conditions, which include both cell and animal models of ischemia reperfusion and complications associate...
Published in Current drug targets
The use of simple hosts such as Dictyostelium discoideum in the study of host pathogen interactions offers a number of advantages and has steadily increased in recent years. Infection-specific genes can often only be studied in a very limited way in man and even in the mouse model their analysis is usually expensive, time consuming and technically ...
Published in Current drug targets
Animal models, which mimic human disease, are invaluable tools for understanding the mechanisms of disease pathogenesis and development of treatment strategies. In particular, animal models play important roles in the area of infectious arthritis. Alphaviruses, including Ross River virus (RRV), o'nyong-nyong virus, chikungunya virus (CHIKV), mayaro...
Published in Current drug targets
To gain an in-depth grasp of infectious processes one has to know the specific interactions between the virulence factors of the pathogen and the host defense mechanisms. A thorough understanding is crucial for identifying potential new drug targets and designing drugs against which the pathogens might not develop resistance easily. Model organisms...
Published in Current drug targets
Plastoquinone, a very effective electron carrier and antioxidant of chloroplasts, was conjugated with decyltriphenylphosphonium to obtain a cation easily penetrating through membranes. This cation, called SkQ1, is specifically targeted to mitochondria by electrophoresis in the electric field formed by the mitochondrial respiratory chain. The respir...
Published in Current drug targets
EGFR somatic mutations define a subset of NSCLCs that are most likely to benefit from EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). These tumors are dependent on EGFR-signaling for survival. Recently, tyrosine kinase domain somatic mutations have been approved as criterion to decide first-line therapy in this group of advanced NSCLCs. Anyway, all patient...
