In Silico Design of Beta-Secretase Inhibitors in Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer's disease is the major cause of senile dementia, flewing out 10% of 65 years old and 50% of 85 years old global population. The major fisiopathologic characteristics of Alzheimer's disease are the deposition of extracellular neuritic plaques and the presence of intracellular neurofibrillary tangles in memory-related areas of the brain. The plaques are composed by the β-amyloid peptide with 40 or 42 residues, result from hydrolysis of the amyloid precursor protein by the β-secretase 1 (BACE-1) on the amyloidogenic pathway, that begins with the BACE-1 and which inhibition is considered one of the most promising treatments available of Alzheimer's disease.

Using computer-aided drug design and medicinal chemistry strategies in the fight against diabetes.

The aim of this work is to present a simple, practical and efficient protocol for drug design, in particular Diabetes, which includes selection of the illness, good choice of a target as well as a bioactive ligand and then usage of various computer aided drug design and medicinal chemistry tools to design novel potential drug candidates in different diseases. We have selected the validated target dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-IV), whose inhibition contributes to reduce glucose levels in type 2 diabetes patients. The most active inhibitor with complex X-ray structure reported was initially extracted from the BindingDB database.

Computer-aided drug design of novel PLA2 inhibitor candidates for treatment of snakebite.

Phospholipases A(2) (PLA(2)) are enzymes commonly found in snake venoms from Viperidae and Elaphidae families, which are major components thereof. Many plants are used in traditional medicine as active agents against various effects induced by snakebite. This article presents the PLA(2) BthTX-I structure prediction based on homology modeling.