Parkinson's disease management. Part II- discovery of MAO-B inhibitors based on nitrogen heterocycles and analogues.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder mainly characterized by a progressive neurodegeneration of the dopaminergic neurons. The available pharmacological therapy for PD aims to stop the progress of symptoms, reduce disability, slowing the neurodegenerative process and/or preventing long-term complications along the therapy. The main strategic developments that have led to progress in the medical management of PD have focused on improvements in dopaminergic therapies.

A radial-distribution-function approach for predicting rodent carcinogenicity.

Carcinogenic activity has been investigated using the Radial-Distribution-Function (RDF) approach. A discriminant model was developed to predict the carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic activity on a data set of 188 compounds. The percentage of overall classification was 76.

Quantitative structure activity relationship for the computational prediction of nitrocompounds carcinogenicity.

Several nitrocompounds have been screened for carcinogenicity in rodents, but this is a lengthy and expensive process, taking two years and typically costing 2.5 million dollars, and uses large numbers of animals. There is, therefore, much impetus to develop suitable alternative methods.