Several studies report the effects of excessive use of sugars and sweeteners in the diet. These include obesity, cardiac diseases, diabetes, and even lymphomas, leukemias, cancers of the bladder and brain, chronic fatigue syndrome, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, autism, and systemic lupus. On the other hand, each sugar and sweetener has a distinct metabolic assimilation process, and its chemical structure plays an important role in this process. Several scientific papers present the biological effects of the sugars and sweeteners in relation to their chemical structure. One important issue dealing with the sugars is the degree of similarity in their structures, focusing mostly on optical isomerism. Finding and developing new sugars and sweeteners with desired properties is an emerging research area, in which in silico approaches play an important role.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1541172932
The specific properties of carbon-based nanomaterials like fullerenes and graphenes have attracted a continuous interest for their possible use as drug carriers. The functionalization of these nanomaterials can lead to the variation or improvement of the required properties, in order to lead to the design of the most suitable compounds within a specific field. In this regard, the possible use of a new class of nanostructures -the rhombellanes- as nanocarriers is investigated. The aim of the paper is to study the interactions of indomethacin and four analogues with anti-inflammatory activity on 13 rhombellanes (three of them with a hyper-adamantane motif, Ada-rbl, three cube-rhombellane homeomorphs, C-rbl, and seven cube-rhombellane-ether/amine structures). Five compounds with anti-inflammatory activity have been docked to the surface of the rhombellanes; comparisons with the results obtained for fullerene C60 have been performed. The best binding affinities for the indomethacin and its derivatives have been obtained for two types of rhombellanes, Ada-rbl and C-rbl. The indomethacin analogue I4 shows an increased binding affinity for C-rbl.420, similar to the value obtained for C60. Best results have been obtained for rhombellane derivatives characterized by smaller HOMO-LUMO gaps.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1542055876
We present a modern in silico virtual screening workflow towards novel MurB inhibitors. Namely, the field of antibacterial research is in crucial need of novel lead compounds on new or underexplored therapeutic targets such as MurB. We identified three structurally distinct compounds that indicated promising micromolar inhibitory activity on E. coli MurB. All three compounds did not display cytotoxicity on HepG2 cell line, but also did not possess in vitro antimicrobial activity against S. aureus and E. coli. After the second biological evaluation using radio-labelled substrates in a MurA-MurB coupled test, only marginal inhibitory potency could be reproduced on MurB. As no compound in the series was able to significantly decrease the residual activity of the enzyme, we decided to report the complete inactive compound set to be used as decoys.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4814449