• Molecules and Cells
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• 제44권9호
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• pp.688-695
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• 2021

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has become a global health concern. Various SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have been developed and are being used for vaccination worldwide. However, no therapeutic agents against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been developed so far; therefore, new therapeutic agents are urgently needed. In the present study, we evaluated several hepatitis C virus direct-acting antivirals as potential candidates for drug repurposing against COVID-19. Theses include asunaprevir (a protease inhibitor), daclatasvir (an NS5A inhibitor), and sofosbuvir (an RNA polymerase inhibitor). We found that asunaprevir, but not sofosbuvir and daclatasvir, markedly inhibited SARS-CoV-2-induced cytopathic effects in Vero E6 cells. Both RNA and protein levels of SARS-CoV-2 were significantly decreased by treatment with asunaprevir. Moreover, asunaprevir profoundly decreased virion release from SARS-CoV-2-infected cells. A pseudoparticle entry assay revealed that asunaprevir blocked SARS-CoV-2 infection at the binding step of the viral life cycle. Furthermore, asunaprevir inhibited SARS-CoV-2 propagation in human lung Calu-3 cells. Collectively, we found that asunaprevir displays broad-spectrum antiviral activity and therefore might be worth developing as a new drug repurposing candidate for COVID-19.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• 제41권6호
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• pp.331-336
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• 2011

The instability of hirsutenone (HST), a potential therapeutic candidate for the treatment of atopic dermatitis (AD) and ovarian carcinoma, is one of the main concerns for the development of drug product. In the present study, aqueous stability of HST was investigated by kinetic analysis, and the effect of several factors covering temperature, nitrogen gas ($N_2$) flushing, and selection of proper antioxidant was compared. Cosolvent system composed of distilled water and methanol (9:1 v/v) was used as a vehicle to dissolve HST at the concentration of $200{\mu}g/mL$. Samples of aqueous solution were prepared under the absence or presence of antioxidants, such as ascorbic acid (AA), sodium edetate (EDTA), and ascorbyl palmitate (AP), and subjected for stability test. The degradation of HST in aqueous solution was followed by the first order kinetics with an extremely short half life of less than a week at room temperature, and was accelerated as the temperature increased. $N_2$ flushing brought a little enhancement in stability compared to control solution, but the effect was insufficient. The addition of AA and EDTA (0.1%) significantly enhanced the stability of HST at $40^{\circ}C$, but the addition of AP (0.01%) was limited due to its water insolubility and revealed no promising result. The stability of HST was increased proportionally by the amount of AA added, showing the difference in degree of stabilization as an order of magnitude. Finally, we conclude that HST was stabilized by the addition of a suitable antioxidant, suggesting AA as the most effective stabilizer.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.268-275
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• 2014

The harshness of legionellosis differs from mild Pontiac fever to potentially fatal Legionnaire's disease. The increasing development of drug resistance against legionellosis has led to explore new novel drug targets. It has been found that phosphoglucosamine mutase, phosphomannomutase, and phosphoglyceromutase enzymes can be used as the most probable therapeutic drug targets through extensive data mining. Phosphoglucosamine mutase is involved in amino sugar and nucleotide sugar metabolism. The purpose of this study was to predict the potential target of that specific drug. For this, the 3D structure of phosphoglucosamine mutase of Legionella pneumophila (strain Paris) was determined by means of homology modeling through Phyre2 and refined by ModRefiner. Then, the designed model was evaluated with a structure validation program, for instance, PROCHECK, ERRAT, Verify3D, and QMEAN, for further structural analysis. Secondary structural features were determined through self-optimized prediction method with alignment (SOPMA) and interacting networks by STRING. Consequently, we performed molecular docking studies. The analytical result of PROCHECK showed that 95.0% of the residues are in the most favored region, 4.50% are in the additional allowed region and 0.50% are in the generously allowed region of the Ramachandran plot. Verify3D graph value indicates a score of 0.71 and 89.791, 1.11 for ERRAT and QMEAN respectively. Arg419, Thr414, Ser412, and Thr9 were found to dock the substrate for the most favorable binding of S-mercaptocysteine. However, these findings from this current study will pave the way for further extensive investigation of this enzyme in wet lab experiments and in that way assist drug design against legionellosis.

• 한국생물정보학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국생물정보시스템생물학회 2000년도 International Symposium on Bioinformatics
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• pp.74-82
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• 2000

Prostate cancer initially responds and regresses in response to androgen depletion therapy, but most human prostate cancers will eventually recur, and re-grow as an androgen independent tumor. Once these tumors become hormone refractory, they usually are incurable leading to death for the patient. Little is known about the molecular details of how prostate cancer cells regress following androgen ablation and which genes are involved in the androgen independent growth following the development of resistance to therapy. Such knowledge would reveal putative drug targets useful in the rational therapeutic design to prevent therapy resistance and control androgen independent growth. The application of genome scale technologies have permitted new insights into the molecular mechanisms associated with these processes. Specifically, we have applied functional genomics using high density cDNA microarray analysis for parallel gene expression analysis of prostate cancer in an experimental xenograft system during androgen withdrawal therapy, and following therapy resistance, The large amount of expression data generated posed a formidable bioinformatics challenge. A novel template based gene clustering algorithm was developed and applied to the data to discover the genes that respond to androgen ablation. The data show restoration of expression of androgen dependent genes in the recurrent tumors and other signaling genes. Together, the discovered genes appear to be involved in prostate cancer cell growth and therapy resistance in this system. We have also developed and applied tissue microarray (TMA) technology for high throughput molecular analysis of hundreds to thousands of clinical specimens simultaneously. TMA analysis was used for rapid clinical translation of candidate genes discovered by cDNA microarray analysis to determine their clinical utility as diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic targets. Finally, we have developed a bioinformatic approach to combine pharmacogenomic data on the efficacy and specificity of various drugs to target the discovered prostate cancer growth associated candidate genes in an attempt to improve current therapeutics.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.58-65
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• 2015

Melanoma is the most aggressive skin cancer and its incidence is gradually increasing worldwide. Patients with metastatic melanoma have a very poor prognosis (estimated 5-year survival rate of <16%). In the last few years, several drugs have been approved for malignant melanoma, such as tyrosine kinase inhibitors and immune checkpoint blockades. Although new therapeutic agents have improved progression-free and overall survival, their use is limited by drug resistance and drug-related toxicity. At the same time, adoptive cell therapy of metastatic melanoma with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes has shown promising results in preclinical and clinical studies. In this review, we summarize the currently available drugs for treatment of malignant melanoma. In addition, we suggest cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells as another candidate approach for adoptive cell therapy of melanoma. Our preclinical study and several previous studies have shown that CIK cells have potent anti-tumor activity against melanomas in vitro and in an in vivo human tumor xenograft model without any toxicity.

• Natural Product Sciences
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• 제17권2호
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• pp.113-116
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• 2011

Arginase competitively inhibits nitric oxide synthase (NOS) via use of the common substrate L-arginine. Arginase II has recently reported as a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis. In our experiment, the EtOH extracts of four-hundreds extracts drugs were investigated for the arginase inhibitory activity. Among them, four extracts exhibited over 50% inhibition of arginase II activity compared to control at a concentration of 150${\mu}g/ml$. In particular, the seed of Arctium lappa, gum-resin of Boswellia carterii, aerial part of Artemisia apiacea and rhizome of Cyperus rotundus inhibited arginase II activity, with $IC_{50}$ values of 118.4, 135.4, 123.9 and 86.7${\mu}g/ml$, respectively. In addition, four plant extracts showed less than 20% inhibition of arginase I activity at 150${\mu}g/ml$. These plants might be the potential candidate materials in the development of the novel atherosclerosis drug.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제32권6호
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• pp.718-729
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• 2022

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the most common primary esophageal malignancy with poor prognosis. Here, due to the necessity for exploring potential therapies against ESCC, we obtained the gene expression data on ESCC from the TCGA and GEO databases. Venn diagram analysis was applied to identify common targets. The protein-protein interaction network was constructed by Cytoscape software, and the hub targets were extracted from the network via cytoHubba. The potential hub nodes as drug targets were found by pharmacophore-based virtual screening and molecular modeling, and the antitumor activity was evaluated through in vitro studies. A total of 364 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in ESCC were identified. Pathway enrichment analyses suggested that most DEGs were mainly involved in the cell cycle. Three hub targets were retrieved, including CENPF, CCNA2 (cyclin A), and CCNB1 (cyclin B1), which were highly expressed in esophageal cancer and associated with prognosis. Moreover, amentoflavone, a promising drug candidate found by pharmacophore-based virtual screening, showed antiproliferative and proapoptotic effects and induced G1 in esophageal squamous carcinoma cells. Taken together, our findings suggested that amentoflavone could be a potential cell cycle inhibitor targeting cyclin B1, and is therefore expected to serve as a great therapeutic agent for treating esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.633-639
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• 2005

Frequently used for humans as a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, naproxen has been known to induce ulcerative gastric lesions. The present study was undertaken to investigate the in vivo therapeutic effect of astaxanthin, isolated from a Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous mutant, against naproxen-induced gastric antral ulceration in rats. The rats were treated with three doses of astaxanthin [1, 5, and 25 mg/kg body weight (B.W.), respectively] once daily for 2 weeks after pretreatment of 80 mg of naproxen/kg B.W. twice daily for 3 days, while the control rats received only 80 mg of naproxen/kg B.W. twice daily for 3 days. The oral administration of astaxanthin (1,5, and 25 mg/kg B.W.) showed a curative effect against naproxen (80 mg/kg B.W.)-induced gastric antral ulcer and reduced the elevated lipid peroxide level in gastric mucosa. In addition, astaxanthin treatment resulted in significant increase in the activities of radical scavenging enzymes such as superoxide dismutase, catalase, and glutathione peroxidase. A histologic examination clearly proved that acute gastric mucosal lesion induced by naproxen nearly disappeared after the astaxanthin treatment. These results suggest that astaxanthin eliminated the lipid peroxides and free radicals induced by naproxen and may be a potential candidate for remedy of gastric ulceration.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• 제26권1호
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• pp.47-57
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• 2022

Stiripentol is an anti-epileptic drug for the treating of refractory status epilepticus. It has been reported that stiripentol can attenuate seizure severity and reduce seizure-induced neuronal damage in animal models of epilepsy. The objective of the present study was to investigate effects of post-treatment with stiripentol on cognitive deficit and neuronal damage in the cornu ammonis 1 (CA1) region of the hippocampus proper following transient ischemia in the forebrain of gerbils. To evaluate ischemia-induced cognitive impairments, passive avoidance test and 8-arm radial maze test were performed. It was found that post-treatment with stiripentol at 20 mg/kg, but not 10 or 15 mg/kg, reduced ischemia-induced memory impairment. Transient ischemia-induced neuronal death in the CA1 region was also significantly attenuated only by 20 mg/kg stiripentol treatment after transient ischemia. In addition, 20 mg/kg stiripentol treatment significantly decreased ischemia-induced astrocyte damage and immunoglobulin G leakage. In brief, stiripentol treatment after transient ischemia ameliorated transient ischemia-induced cognitive impairment in gerbils, showing that pyramidal neurons were protected and astrocyte damage and blood brain barrier leakage were significantly attenuated in the hippocampus. Results of this study suggest stiripentol can be developed as a candidate of therapeutic drug for ischemic stroke.

• 한국발생생물학회지:발생과생식
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• 제16권3호
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• pp.155-168
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• 2012

Therapeutic cancer is a long lasting and turbulent history accompany with the milestones in surgical intervention, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In the past decade, however, metastatic cancer still obstinately exists challenging the professional scientist. Beside the major forms of cancer treatment, Diphtheria toxin (DT) which is produced by a pathogenic strain of bacterium Corynebacterium diphtheria to shield themselves against the other dangerous organism, have been researched as a potential candidate to overcome the drawback such as non-specific, non-effect to drug resistant cancer cell and side effects when using chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In the context of suicide gene therapy, the DT expression under controlling of tissue-specific promoter will be targeted in cancer cell but defect in normal cell. The molecular mechanism, characteristic of DT-bases therapy and prominent achievements of preclinical and clinical studies for the past decade are summarized and discussed in this review.