A Brief Background
Nathan Keighley in Miraculous Medicines and the Chemistry of Drug Design, 2020
The work undertaken by medicinal chemists has been instrumental in the improvements observed in the health of society and the increase in life expectancy in modern times. Surgical procedures that are now routine, prior to the development of antibiotics, carried great risk of septicaemia and death. Many diseases caused by harmful pathogens can now be treated. Malfunctions of the body or mind that are understood on a molecular basis can also be cured by medicines. Conditions that were once life-threatening, such as diabetes or heart disease, now have drugs that are available to preserve a healthy life. As people are now living longer, society is faced with the challenges of an aging population. Diseases such as cancer and neurological deterioration in Alzheimer’s and dementia are now starting to be understood and drugs, which strive to combat these diseases, are available on the market. It is important to acknowledge how much chemistry has improved our lives.
Components of Nutrition
Christopher Cumo in Ancestral Diets and Nutrition, 2020
This understanding came from the emerging science of chemistry, a discipline that sought to identify and describe the behavior of matter’s constituents: atoms and molecules. Before the twentieth century, however, the molecules and elements of nutrition (nutrients) included only proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and minerals.8 Yet rats languished when fed a diet adequate in these components but absent anything else. The discovery of the first vitamin, a word coined in 1912 and discussed later, opened a new avenue for research, and in 1928, Hungarian biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893–1986) isolated vitamin C, ascorbic acid.9 Subsequent researchers elucidated its role in helping the body metabolize proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Its function in collagen synthesis was important in eliminating scurvy’s symptoms. Vitamin C’s presence in many vegetables and fruits—though coconut is not rich in it—explained their effectiveness against scurvy, providing a microlevel understanding of how these disparate foods combatted the malady.
Treading the Academic Waters
Jazlin Ebenezer in Hark, Hark! Hear the Story of a Science Educator, 2020
In the second half of the year-long course, as part of our assignment, we observed a teacher, took field notes, and wrote a paper. I watched a chemistry teacher at the university prep school behind my apartment for two days. The chemistry teacher’s instruction was on the types of chemical reactions. My professor asked me to use the book Common Knowledge: The Development of Understanding in the Classroom authored by Edwards and Mercer (1987), professors at the University of Cambridge, London, England, to interpret my observation. I used the book as a lens to frame the class discourse on the type of chemical reactions, which I audio-recorded on two successive days and transcribed verbatim. The chemistry teacher’s instruction pattern heavily involved fill-in-the-blanks and cued elicitations.
The impact of chemoinformatics on drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery, 2020
Karina Martinez-Mayorga, Abraham Madariaga-Mazon, José L. Medina-Franco, Gerald Maggiora
There are several definitions of chemoinformatics reviewed in the literature [1–4]. The term ‘chemoinformatics’ was coined in 1998 by Frank Brown as the ‘mixing of information resources to transform data into information, and information into knowledge, for the intended purpose of making decisions faster in the arena of drug lead identification and optimization’ [5]. During a scientific conference in 1999, Greg Paris provided a broader definition: ‘Chemoinformatics is a generic term that encompasses the design, creation, organization, management, retrieval, analysis, dissemination, visualization, and use of chemical information’ [6]. More recently, Gasteiger and Funatsu provided an even broader definition: ‘Chemoinformatics is the application of informatics methods to solve chemical problems’ [7]. This latter definition is associated with the terms proposed previously: ‘Chemical informatics’ defined as ‘application of information technology to chemistry’ and ‘chemometrics’ generally understood as the quantitative analysis of chemical data using mathematical and statistical methods [8].
A short review on chemical properties, stability and nano-technological advances for curcumin delivery
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery, 2020
Self-assembly is a spontaneous process that allows some molecules to become designed in a specific desirable structure without any external interventions. Self-assembly leads to the generation of a complex hierarchy of molecules without any defect [73]. It is a widely occurring process in nature especially in molecular phenomenon such as crystal states where the building blocks tend to arrange in a three-dimensional pattern, phospholipid aggregation into cell membranes, as well as DNA and RNA supramolecular systems. In self-assembly, molecules have chemical functionality of a certain reactivity or directionality that restricts the products with stable thermodynamics [74]. For example, non-covalent interactions such as hydrogen bonding, Van der Waals forces, and metal-organic coordination bonds play major roles in stabilizing the self-assembled structures, and interestingly, this has led to the creation of a huge material chemistry field that deals with synthesizing porous frameworks [75].
The chemical diversity and structure-based discovery of allosteric modulators for the PIF-pocket of protein kinase PDK1
Published in Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry, 2019
Xinyuan Xu, Yingyi Chen, Qiang Fu, Duan Ni, Jian Zhang, Xiaolong Li, Shaoyong Lu
ANCHOR.QUERY is a method that efficiently allows to obtain active molecules from the known molecule by combination of computation and synthesis99. The molecules acquired through this approach can be synthesised in one step by multicomponent reaction (MCR) chemistry. Based on above advantages, Kroon et al. applied ANCHOR.QUERY approach for the new scaffolds that bind to the allosteric PIF-pocket of PDK1100. The starting point of their investigation was based on the cocrystal structure of PDK1-2 complex. Through virtual screening and following SAR research, the racemic compound 7 was synthesised. The ability of the racemic to disrupt the PDK1-PIFtide interaction was different, with IC50 values of 7.0 μΜ for enantiomer 7 A (18, Figure 8) and 15 μM for enantiomer 7B (19, Figure 8), respectively. In both molecules, the 2-chlorophenyl substituent that acts as an anchor is located in the deep PIF-pocket, but shows a different orientation (Figure 14(A) and Figure 14(B)). In the structure of 18-bound PDK1, the 2-chlorophenyl substituent forms a short contact with the residue Phe149, while in the structure of 19-bound PDK1 it turns about 180°, with no contacts with Phe149. In addition, the extra interactions formed by the carboxylic acid group and the amide group of 18 can explain the higher affinity of 18 than 19.
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