Neurological disorders—ranging from spinal cord injuries to Alzheimer’s disease—are among the most challenging health issues. There is an ongoing need for disease models and screening sy...
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Rodents and other small animals are extensively used as models to study human health and disease, but there are increasing concerns about their relevance. Research funding and regulatory agencies are ...
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Rodents and other small animals are extensively used as models to study human health and disease, but there are increasing concerns about their relevance. Research funding and regulatory agencies are ...
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Presently, there are no good rodent models for mania, which is a critical component of bipolar disorder. The most commonly used approach is to inject normal mice with amphetamines to produce hyperacti...
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Patch clamping is a well-known technique for investigating the movement of ions and molecules through cellular membranes via ion channels. To create an extremely high-resistance ‘gigaseal’ around ...
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Fungi produce a variety of chemical compounds called secondary metabolites. These compounds display a broad range of activities, including fighting off other fungi and bacteria. They also are useful f...
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Nearly half of all diseases involve ion channels – channels in cell membranes that control the flow of ions into and out of cells. Certain channels open in response to natural signal molecules a...
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The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is made up of brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMECs), which line brain capillaries and control trafficking between the bloodstream and neural tissue. Although esse...
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Approximately half of all diseases affect the function of ion channels in cell membranes. Testing the flow of ions and molecules through these membranes clearly is vital to drug discovery and research...
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Many pharmaceuticals and other biologically active molecules contain chemical sequences called triads that are challenging to prepare in the laboratory. Specifically, triads are three or more contiguo...
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Influenza viruses instigate annual global epidemics. The first influenza pandemic in 40 years occurred during the 2009-2010 season, when a novel H1N1 strain emerged and spread worldwide. The United St...
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Cancers cause about 15 percent of all human deaths worldwide, are not fully understood and defy efficient therapy. Early detection and treatment can improve survival rates and one promising strategy i...
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The ability of bacteria to adapt and resist antibiotics has led to growing initiatives in the United States and other countries to develop new drugs and modify existing chemical structures to increase...
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Although it is essential to healthy brain function, the blood-brain barrier (BBB) interferes with drug delivery, preventing more than 98 percent of small molecule pharmaceuticals and nearly 100 percen...
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Phosphines have many commercial and industrial uses as attachments to rare earth metal catalysts, including specialized uses in asymmetric hydrogenation and other catalytic transformations. Asymmetric...
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People with familial combined hyperlipidemia (FCH) are hypertriglyceridemic and hypercholesterolemic, and often go on to develop type II diabetes mellitus in middle age. Current FCH mouse models resul...
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Many of the compounds used in drug discovery by pharmaceutical companies consist of a central core structure (aglycon) and various sugar (glycosyl) attachments. Because the sugar moieties of many of t...
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Cytochrome P450 (CYP) is a family of predominantly hepatic enzymes known to be important in the metabolism of many drugs, carcinogens and other chemicals of pharmacologic and toxicologic significance....
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Drosophila commonly are used as model organisms.  As many as 70 percent of human disease genes have homologues in Drosophila, making these organisms useful for identifying particular disease gene...
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Asymmetric synthesis is important in the pharmaceutical industry because frequently only one optically active isomer, or enantiomer, is therapeutically active. Therefore, it is often desirable to sele...
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Stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD) is the rate-limiting enzyme in the biosynthesis of monounsaturated fatty acids. SCDs may influence the development of diseases such as obesity, atherosclerosis and diabet...
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Suspension crystallization processes often result in crystals with a wide range of particle sizes.  Accurately controlling the distribution of shapes and sizes is a challenge in the pharmaceutica...
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Patch clamping is a well known method for measuring the flow of ions and molecules through ion channels imbedded in the cellular membrane.  The method employs micropipettes, or similar microscale...
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Many of the compounds used in drug discovery by pharmaceutical companies are glycosylated, bacterial secondary metabolites. A glycosylated metabolite consists of a central core structure (aglycon) and...
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Phosphines have many commercial and industrial uses as attachments to rare earth metal catalysts, including specialized uses in asymmetric hydrogenation and other catalytic transformations. However, c...
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