Objectives: To investigate the factors influencing medication errors made by informal caregivers while providing care at home.
Methods: A cross-sectional study based on an online survey, which included both structured and open-ended questions, was conducted in Spain. The survey comprised 49 questions to collect self-reported avoidable medication errors made by caregivers at home.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly driving early drug design, offering novel approaches to virtual screening. Phenotypic virtual screening (PVS) aims to predict how cancer cell lines respond to different compounds by focusing on observable characteristics rather than specific molecular targets. Some studies have suggested that deep learning may not be the best approach for PVS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDifferent convergent evolutionary strategies adopted by angiosperm fruits lead to diverse functional seed dispersal units. Dry dehiscent fruits are a common type of fruit, characterized by their lack of fleshy pericarp and the release of seeds at maturity through openings (dehiscence zones, DZs) in their structure. In previous decades, a set of core players in DZ formation have been intensively characterized in Arabidopsis and integrated in a gene regulatory network (GRN) that explains the morphogenesis of these tissues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOxidative stress is a key factor in the development of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and liver disorders. Antioxidant therapies that target oxidative damage show significant promise in preventing and treating these conditions. Berberine, an alkaloid derived from various plants in the family, enhances cellular defenses against oxidative stress through several mechanisms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Artificial intelligence (AI) is exhibiting tremendous potential to reduce the massive costs and long timescales of drug discovery. There are however important challenges currently limiting the impact and scope of AI models.
Areas Covered: In this perspective, the authors discuss a range of data issues (bias, inconsistency, skewness, irrelevance, small size, high dimensionality), how they challenge AI models, and which issue-specific mitigations have been effective.
Cucurbit[]urils, renowned for their host-guest chemistry, are becoming versatile biomimetic receptors. Herein, we report that cucurbit[7]uril (CB[7]) accelerates the intramolecular Diels-Alder (IMDA) reaction for previously elusive and unreactive tertiary -methyl--(homo)allyl-2-furfurylamines by up to 4 orders of magnitude under mild conditions. Using H NMR titrations and ITC experiments, we characterize the dissimilar thermodynamic and kinetic properties of the complexes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCellular behavior, cell differentiation and ontogenetic development in eukaryotes result from complex interactions between epigenetic and classic molecular genetic mechanisms, with many of these interactions still to be elucidated. Histone deacetylase enzymes (HDACs) promote the interaction of histones with DNA by compacting the nucleosome, thus causing transcriptional repression. MADS-domain transcription factors are highly conserved in eukaryotes and participate in controlling diverse developmental processes in animals and plants, as well as regulating stress responses in plants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging
August 2024
Gemcitabine is a first-line chemotherapy for pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD), but many PAAD patients do not respond to gemcitabine-containing treatments. Being able to predict such nonresponders would hence permit the undelayed administration of more promising treatments while sparing gemcitabine life-threatening side effects for those patients. Unfortunately, the few predictors of PAAD patient response to this drug are weak, none of them exploiting yet the power of machine learning (ML).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCIC::DUX4 sarcoma (CDS) is a rare but highly aggressive undifferentiated small round cell sarcoma driven by a fusion between the tumor suppressor Capicua (CIC) and DUX4. Currently, there are no effective treatments and efforts to identify and translate better therapies are limited by the scarcity of patient tumor samples and cell lines. To address this limitation, we generated three genetically engineered mouse models of CDS (Ch7CDS, Ai9CDS, and TOPCDS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe examine structural brain characteristics across three diagnostic categories: at risk for serious mental illness; first-presenting episode and recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD). We investigate whether the three diagnostic groups display a stepwise pattern of brain changes in the cortico-limbic regions. Integrated clinical and neuroimaging data from three large Canadian studies were pooled (total n = 622 participants, aged 12-66 years).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Small-molecule Programmable Cell Death Protein 1/Programmable Death-Ligand 1 (PD1/PDL1) inhibition via PDL1 dimerization has the potential to lead to inexpensive drugs with better cancer patient outcomes and milder side effects. However, this therapeutic approach has proven challenging, with only one PDL1 dimerizer reaching early clinical trials so far. There is hence a need for fast and accurate methods to develop alternative PDL1 dimerizers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPost-translational modifications of lysine in histones, as methylation and acetylation, have well established functions in epigenetics and are emerging as important actors in broader biological regulation. Currently, the detection of acetylated lysine (Kac) in water solution as free amino acid or protein residue remains challenging. Acetylated lysine is a neutral amino acid, and the lack of ion-dipole interactions causes the decrease in binding affinity displayed by synthetic molecular receptors with respect to the other lysine modifications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChemical double mutant cycles were used to measure the interaction of a -methyl pyridinium cation with a π-box in a calix[4]pyrrole receptor. Although the cation-π interaction is attractive (-11 kJ mol), it is 7 kJ mol less favourable than the corresponding aromatic interaction with the isosteric but uncharged tolyl group.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report the synthesis and characterization of two diastereomeric phosphoramidite calix[4]pyrrole cavitands and their corresponding gold(I) complexes, •Au(I)•Cl and •Au(I)•Cl, featuring the metal center directed inward and outward with respect to their aromatic cavity. We studied the catalytic activity of the complexes in the hydration of a series of propargyl esters as the benchmarking reaction. All substrates were equipped with a six-membered ring substituent either lacking or including a polar group featuring different hydrogen bond acceptor (HBA) capabilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Up to 73% of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID) currently have prescriptions for psychotropic drugs. This is explained by a higher prevalence of medical and psychiatric chronic comorbidities, which favors polypharmacy, increasing the probability of the appearance of adverse events (AEs). These could be a preventable cause of harm to patients with ASD and an unnecessary waste of healthcare resources.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConformationally well-defined supramolecular complexes that can be studied in different solvents provide a platform for separating and quantifying free energy contributions due to functional group interactions and desolvation. Here 1:1 complexes formed between four different calix[4]pyrrole receptors and eleven different pyridine -oxide guests have been used to dissect the factors that govern aromatic interactions with heterocycles in water and in chloroform solution. H NMR spectroscopy shows that the three-dimensional structures of the complexes are fixed by four H-bonding interactions between the pyrrole donors at the bottom of the receptor and the -oxide acceptor on the guest, locking the geometrical arrangement of interacting functional groups in the binding pocket at the other end of the receptor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStructure-based virtual screening (SBVS) via docking has been used to discover active molecules for a range of therapeutic targets. Chemical and protein data sets that contain integrated bioactivity information have increased both in number and in size. Artificial intelligence and, more concretely, its machine-learning (ML) branch, including deep learning, have effectively exploited these data sets to build scoring functions (SFs) for SBVS against targets with an atomic-resolution 3D model (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: NUT carcinoma (NC) is an aggressive squamous carcinoma defined by the BRD4-NUT fusion oncoprotein. Routinely effective systemic treatments are unavailable for most NC patients. The lack of an adequate animal model precludes identifying and leveraging cell-extrinsic factors therapeutically in NC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJustification: Providing care to patients with several conditions and simultaneously taking several medications at home is inexorably growing in developed countries. This trend increases the chances of home caregivers experiencing diverse errors related with medication or care.
Objective: To determine the effectiveness of four different educational solutions compared to the natural intervention (absence of intervention) to provide a safer care at home by caregivers.