Imagine a world where heart disease is less scary. That's the world Professor Akira Endo has been helping to create, and we're celebrating his 90th birthday! This amazing scientist has spent his career finding ways to keep our hearts healthy. Let's dive into his incredible work and how it's changed medicine. Professor Endo, a true hero in the world of heart health, ...
Imagine you can't absorb creatine, a vital nutrient for brain cells. This is a reality for people with a rare disease called creatine transporter deficiency (CTD). But scientists have come up with a clever solution: dodecyl creatine ester (DCE), a special form of creatine that can slip right through the non-functioning creatine transporters. They've been testing it i...
Did you know that the oldest pharmacology journal, Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology, faced a dramatic shift after 1933? This is when the Nazi regime took over. Many Jewish and dissident German pharmacologists were forced to leave their homeland. This study looks at what happened to their scientific work and where they ended up. Researchers looked at 71...
Ever wondered how cells communicate? One key player is something called cyclic AMP (cAMP). It's like a messenger that tells cells what to do. But sometimes, enzymes called phosphodiesterases (PDEs) break down cAMP, and that can cause trouble. Scientists have been trying to stop these PDEs, but their efforts have often caused unwanted side effects. Enter KTX207, a cl...
Zhengsui Wan (ZSW) has been a go-to traditional Chinese medicine for treating Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) in many institutions. But how does it actually work? To find out, researchers turned to network pharmacology and molecular docking. They wanted to see if ZSW could fight ALL in lab settings (in vitro) and in living organisms (in vivo). First, let's talk a...
Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a tough-to-treat gut disorder. Enter Gegen Qinlian Decoction (GQD), an oldie-but-goodie Chinese medicine mix. It's been shown to help, but how? Scientists combined metabolomics and network pharmacology to find out. First, they spotted metabolites that changed in mice with UC, then traced the metabolic paths. Next, they built a protein netw...
We've got a big problem: not enough experts to help kids with medicines. Back in 2012, the National Institutes of Health started a program to train future pediatric clinical pharmacologists. We checked in with trainees and graduates to see what's working and what needs fixing. Over 50% responded, most being female (61%) and white (75%), and working in academia (75%)....