Infections caused by intracellular bacterial pathogens are difficult to treat since most antibiotics have low cell permeability and undergo rapid degradation within cells.The rapid development and dissemination of ant...Infections caused by intracellular bacterial pathogens are difficult to treat since most antibiotics have low cell permeability and undergo rapid degradation within cells.The rapid development and dissemination of antimicrobial–resistant strains have exacerbated this dilemma.With the increasing knowledge of host–pathogen interactions,especially bacterial strategies for survival and proliferation within host cells,host-directed therapy(HDT)has attracted increased interest and has emerged as a promising antiinfection method for treating intracellular infection.Herein,we applied a cell-based screening approach to a US Food and Drug Administration(FDA)-approved drug library to identify compounds that can inhibit the intracellular replication of Salmonella Typhimurium(S.Typhimurium).This screening allowed us to identify the antidiarrheal agent loperamide(LPD)as a potent inhibitor of S.Typhimurium intracellular proliferation.LPD treatment of infected cells markedly promoted the host autophagic response and lysosomal activity.A mechanistic study revealed that the increase in host autophagy and elimination of intracellular bacteria were dependent on the high expression of glycoprotein nonmetastatic melanoma protein B(GPNMB)induced by LPD.In addition,LPD treatment effectively protected against S.Typhimurium infection in Galleria mellonella and mouse models.Thus,our study suggested that LPD may be useful for the treatment of diseases caused by intracellular bacterial pathogens.Moreover,LPD may serve as a promising lead compound for the development of anti-infection drugs based on the HDT strategy.展开更多
Cancer remains a significant global health challenge with limited treatment options beyond systemic therapies,such as chemotherapy,radiotherapy,and molecular targeted therapy.Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising t...Cancer remains a significant global health challenge with limited treatment options beyond systemic therapies,such as chemotherapy,radiotherapy,and molecular targeted therapy.Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising therapeutic modality but the efficacy has plateaued,which therefore provides limited benefits to patients with cancer.Identification of more effective approaches to improve patient outcomes and extend survival are urgently needed.Drug repurposing has emerged as an attractive strategy for drug development and has recently garnered considerable interest.This review comprehensively analyses the efficacy of various repurposed drugs,such as transforming growth factor-beta(TGF-β)inhibitors,metformin,receptor activator of nuclear factor-κB ligand(RANKL)inhibitors,granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor(GM-CSF),thymosinα1(Tα1),aspirin,and bisphosphonate,in tumorigenesis with a specific focus on their impact on tumor immunology and immunotherapy.Additionally,we present a concise overview of the current preclinical and clinical studies investigating the potential therapeutic synergies achieved by combining these agents with immune checkpoint inhibitors.展开更多
Over the course of the past 70 years, the objectives of CA (cellular automata) research shifted from speculative and illustrative purposes without immediate goals outside of given implementations to the more utilita...Over the course of the past 70 years, the objectives of CA (cellular automata) research shifted from speculative and illustrative purposes without immediate goals outside of given implementations to the more utilitarian scientific and engineering objectives of simulating, controlling and predicting other phenomena. Looking back at our own 10-year history of CA related work, however, we recognize a generally inverse tendency from utilitarian objectives to finding more illustrative and speculative value. In this paper, we present a reflection on our own body of CA work, and we discuss the qualities of the various outcomes and insights we gained from a second-order cybernetic perspective. We argue that much of our own CA work may best be understood as creating machines for showing and for repurposing that allow their observers to gain new (second-order cybernetic) ways of seeing from interacting with them.展开更多
In the last decade,attention has become greater to the relationship between neurodegeneration and abnormal insulin signaling in the central nervous system,as insulin in the brain is implicated in neuronal survival,pla...In the last decade,attention has become greater to the relationship between neurodegeneration and abnormal insulin signaling in the central nervous system,as insulin in the brain is implicated in neuronal survival,plasticity,oxidative stress and neuroinflammation.Diabetes mellitus and Parkinson’s disease are both aging-associated diseases that are turning into epidemics worldwide.Diabetes mellitus and insulin resistance not only increase the possibility of developing Parkinson’s disease but can also determine the prognosis and progression of Parkinsonian symptoms.Today,there are no available curative or disease modifying treatments for Parkinson’s disease,but the role of insulin and antidiabetic medications in neurodegeneration opens a door to treatment repurposing to fight against Parkinson’s disease,both in diabetic and nondiabetic Parkinsonian patients.Furthermore,it is essential to comprehend how a frequent and treatable disease such as diabetes can influence the progression of neurodegeneration in a challenging disease such as Parkinson’s disease.Here,we review the present evidence on the connection between Parkinson’s disease and diabetes and the consequential implications of the existing antidiabetic molecules in the severity and development of Parkinsonism,with a particular focus on glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists.展开更多
Objective:Drug repurposing,the application of existing therapeutics to new indications,holds promise in achieving rapid clinical effects at a much lower cost than that of de novo drug development.The aim of our study ...Objective:Drug repurposing,the application of existing therapeutics to new indications,holds promise in achieving rapid clinical effects at a much lower cost than that of de novo drug development.The aim of our study was to perform a more comprehensive drug repurposing prediction of diseases,particularly cancers.Methods:Here,by targeting 4,096 human diseases,including 384 cancers,we propose a greedy computational model based on a heterogeneous multilayer network for the repurposing of 1,419 existing drugs in Drug Bank.We performed additional experimental validation for the dominant repurposed drugs in cancer.Results:The overall performance of the model was well supported by cross-validation and literature mining.Focusing on the top-ranked repurposed drugs in cancers,we verified the anticancer effects of 5 repurposed drugs widely used clinically in drug sensitivity experiments.Because of the distinctive antitumor effects of nifedipine(an antihypertensive agent)and nortriptyline(an antidepressant drug)in prostate cancer,we further explored their underlying mechanisms by using quantitative proteomics.Our analysis revealed that both nifedipine and nortriptyline affected the cancer-related pathways of DNA replication,the cell cycle,and RNA transport.Moreover,in vivo experiments demonstrated that nifedipine and nortriptyline significantly inhibited the growth of prostate tumors in a xenograft model.Conclusions:Our predicted results,which have been released in a public database named The Predictive Database for Drug Repurposing(PAD),provide an informative resource for discovering and ranking drugs that may potentially be repurposed for cancer treatment and determining new therapeutic effects of existing drugs.展开更多
Inflammatory bowel disease(IBD)incidence has been increasing steadily,most dramatically in the Western developed countries.Treatment often includes lifelong immunosuppressive therapy and surgery.There is a critical ne...Inflammatory bowel disease(IBD)incidence has been increasing steadily,most dramatically in the Western developed countries.Treatment often includes lifelong immunosuppressive therapy and surgery.There is a critical need to reduce the burden of IBD and to discover medical therapies with better efficacy and fewer potential side-effects.Repurposing of treatments originally studied in other diseases with similar pathogenesis is less costly and time intensive than de novo drug discovery.This study used a treatment repurposing methodology,the literature-related discovery and innovation(LRDI)text mining system,to identify potential treatments(developed for non-IBD diseases)with sufficient promise for extrapolation to treatment of IBD.By searching for desirable patterns of twenty key biomarkers relevant to IBD(e.g.,inflammation,reactive oxygen species,autophagy,barrier function),the LRDI-based query retrieved approximately 9500 records from Medline.The most recent 350 records were further analyzed for proof-of-concept.Approximately 18%(64/350)met the criteria for discovery(not previously studied in IBD human or animal models)and relevance for application to IBD treatment.Many of the treatments were compounds derived from herbal remedies,and the majority of treatments were being studied in cancer,diabetes,and central nervous system disease,such as depression and dementia.As further validation of the search strategy,the query identified ten treatments that have just recently begun testing in IBD models in the last three years.Literature-related discovery and innovation text mining contains a unique search strategy with tremendous potential to identify treatments for repurposing.A more comprehensive query with additional key biomarkers would have retrieved many thousands more records,further increasing the yield of IBD treatment repurposing discovery.展开更多
Since December 2019,severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has been found to be the culprit in the coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19),causing a global pandemic.Despite the existence of many vaccine programs,t...Since December 2019,severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has been found to be the culprit in the coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19),causing a global pandemic.Despite the existence of many vaccine programs,the number of confirmed cases and fatalities due to COVID-19 is still increasing.Furthermore,a number of variants have been reported.Because of the absence of approved anticoronavirus drugs,the treatment and management of COVID-19 has become a global challenge.Under these circumstances,drug repurposing is an effective method to identify candidate drugs with a shorter cycle of clinical trials.Here,we summarize the current status of the application of drug repurposing in COVID-19,including drug repurposing based on virtual computer screening,network pharmacology,and bioactivity,which may be a beneficial COVID-19 treatment.展开更多
Dose is one of the parameters that any pharmacologist seriously considers when studying the effects of a drug.If the necessary dose to achieve a desired pharmacological effect is in a toxic or very toxic range for hum...Dose is one of the parameters that any pharmacologist seriously considers when studying the effects of a drug.If the necessary dose to achieve a desired pharmacological effect is in a toxic or very toxic range for human use,the drug will probably fall out from further research.The concentration that a drug can reach to its target organ or cell is a direct consequence of the administered dose and its pharmacodynamic properties.Basic researchers investigate at the cellular level or eventually with xenografts.They use different concentrations of the drug in order to determine its cellular effects.However,in many cases,these concentrations require doses that are in the toxic range or well beyond any clinically achievable level.Therefore,in these cases,research is in the realm of toxicology rather than therapeutics.This paper will show some examples about this exercise in futility which is time and resource consuming but that pullulates the pages of many prestigious journals.Many seasoned researchers seem to have forgotten the Paracelsus Paradox.展开更多
The COVID-19 global health disaster has caused more than two million deaths globally.Although,a new therapeutic molecule has not been developed for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2)as of yet....The COVID-19 global health disaster has caused more than two million deaths globally.Although,a new therapeutic molecule has not been developed for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2)as of yet.As a result,some medications that had been previously authorized for use against SARS-CoV-2 could now be given to COVID-19 patients.The use of medications to treat COVID-19 is discussed in this publication.The report also discusses the lessons learned when using combination therapy,convalescent plasma therapy,immunotherapeutic molecules,and therapeutic molecules to treat COVID-19 patients.Several beneficial outcomes were noted with anti-viral therapy and immunotherapy.The COVID-19 medicine and vaccination have undergone 9,037 clinical trials since July 2022.It may be possible to provide COVID-19 patients with a successful outcome through the short-term repurposing of an existing drug.The evaluation of potential antiviral molecules can thus lead to more clinical trials being initiated.展开更多
基金supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China(2021YFD1801000)the Natural Science Foundation of China(32373066)+1 种基金the Natural Science Foundation of Jilin Province(20230101142JC)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.
文摘Infections caused by intracellular bacterial pathogens are difficult to treat since most antibiotics have low cell permeability and undergo rapid degradation within cells.The rapid development and dissemination of antimicrobial–resistant strains have exacerbated this dilemma.With the increasing knowledge of host–pathogen interactions,especially bacterial strategies for survival and proliferation within host cells,host-directed therapy(HDT)has attracted increased interest and has emerged as a promising antiinfection method for treating intracellular infection.Herein,we applied a cell-based screening approach to a US Food and Drug Administration(FDA)-approved drug library to identify compounds that can inhibit the intracellular replication of Salmonella Typhimurium(S.Typhimurium).This screening allowed us to identify the antidiarrheal agent loperamide(LPD)as a potent inhibitor of S.Typhimurium intracellular proliferation.LPD treatment of infected cells markedly promoted the host autophagic response and lysosomal activity.A mechanistic study revealed that the increase in host autophagy and elimination of intracellular bacteria were dependent on the high expression of glycoprotein nonmetastatic melanoma protein B(GPNMB)induced by LPD.In addition,LPD treatment effectively protected against S.Typhimurium infection in Galleria mellonella and mouse models.Thus,our study suggested that LPD may be useful for the treatment of diseases caused by intracellular bacterial pathogens.Moreover,LPD may serve as a promising lead compound for the development of anti-infection drugs based on the HDT strategy.
基金supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.81772830)。
文摘Cancer remains a significant global health challenge with limited treatment options beyond systemic therapies,such as chemotherapy,radiotherapy,and molecular targeted therapy.Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising therapeutic modality but the efficacy has plateaued,which therefore provides limited benefits to patients with cancer.Identification of more effective approaches to improve patient outcomes and extend survival are urgently needed.Drug repurposing has emerged as an attractive strategy for drug development and has recently garnered considerable interest.This review comprehensively analyses the efficacy of various repurposed drugs,such as transforming growth factor-beta(TGF-β)inhibitors,metformin,receptor activator of nuclear factor-κB ligand(RANKL)inhibitors,granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor(GM-CSF),thymosinα1(Tα1),aspirin,and bisphosphonate,in tumorigenesis with a specific focus on their impact on tumor immunology and immunotherapy.Additionally,we present a concise overview of the current preclinical and clinical studies investigating the potential therapeutic synergies achieved by combining these agents with immune checkpoint inhibitors.
文摘Over the course of the past 70 years, the objectives of CA (cellular automata) research shifted from speculative and illustrative purposes without immediate goals outside of given implementations to the more utilitarian scientific and engineering objectives of simulating, controlling and predicting other phenomena. Looking back at our own 10-year history of CA related work, however, we recognize a generally inverse tendency from utilitarian objectives to finding more illustrative and speculative value. In this paper, we present a reflection on our own body of CA work, and we discuss the qualities of the various outcomes and insights we gained from a second-order cybernetic perspective. We argue that much of our own CA work may best be understood as creating machines for showing and for repurposing that allow their observers to gain new (second-order cybernetic) ways of seeing from interacting with them.
基金supported by the Spanish Ministry of Health(PI17/00828 and Ciberned)Galician Government(XUGA,ED431C 2018/10,ED431G/05)FEDER(Regional European Development Fund),all to AIRP.
文摘In the last decade,attention has become greater to the relationship between neurodegeneration and abnormal insulin signaling in the central nervous system,as insulin in the brain is implicated in neuronal survival,plasticity,oxidative stress and neuroinflammation.Diabetes mellitus and Parkinson’s disease are both aging-associated diseases that are turning into epidemics worldwide.Diabetes mellitus and insulin resistance not only increase the possibility of developing Parkinson’s disease but can also determine the prognosis and progression of Parkinsonian symptoms.Today,there are no available curative or disease modifying treatments for Parkinson’s disease,but the role of insulin and antidiabetic medications in neurodegeneration opens a door to treatment repurposing to fight against Parkinson’s disease,both in diabetic and nondiabetic Parkinsonian patients.Furthermore,it is essential to comprehend how a frequent and treatable disease such as diabetes can influence the progression of neurodegeneration in a challenging disease such as Parkinson’s disease.Here,we review the present evidence on the connection between Parkinson’s disease and diabetes and the consequential implications of the existing antidiabetic molecules in the severity and development of Parkinsonism,with a particular focus on glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.31871329,1670066,81872888,and 81821005)Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project(Grant No.2017SHZDZX01)+2 种基金the Key New Drug Creation and Manufacturing Program of China(Grant No.2018ZX09711002-004)the Special Project on Precision Medicine under the National Key R&D Program(Grant No.SQ2017YFSF090210)the K.C.Wong Education Foundation。
文摘Objective:Drug repurposing,the application of existing therapeutics to new indications,holds promise in achieving rapid clinical effects at a much lower cost than that of de novo drug development.The aim of our study was to perform a more comprehensive drug repurposing prediction of diseases,particularly cancers.Methods:Here,by targeting 4,096 human diseases,including 384 cancers,we propose a greedy computational model based on a heterogeneous multilayer network for the repurposing of 1,419 existing drugs in Drug Bank.We performed additional experimental validation for the dominant repurposed drugs in cancer.Results:The overall performance of the model was well supported by cross-validation and literature mining.Focusing on the top-ranked repurposed drugs in cancers,we verified the anticancer effects of 5 repurposed drugs widely used clinically in drug sensitivity experiments.Because of the distinctive antitumor effects of nifedipine(an antihypertensive agent)and nortriptyline(an antidepressant drug)in prostate cancer,we further explored their underlying mechanisms by using quantitative proteomics.Our analysis revealed that both nifedipine and nortriptyline affected the cancer-related pathways of DNA replication,the cell cycle,and RNA transport.Moreover,in vivo experiments demonstrated that nifedipine and nortriptyline significantly inhibited the growth of prostate tumors in a xenograft model.Conclusions:Our predicted results,which have been released in a public database named The Predictive Database for Drug Repurposing(PAD),provide an informative resource for discovering and ranking drugs that may potentially be repurposed for cancer treatment and determining new therapeutic effects of existing drugs.
文摘Inflammatory bowel disease(IBD)incidence has been increasing steadily,most dramatically in the Western developed countries.Treatment often includes lifelong immunosuppressive therapy and surgery.There is a critical need to reduce the burden of IBD and to discover medical therapies with better efficacy and fewer potential side-effects.Repurposing of treatments originally studied in other diseases with similar pathogenesis is less costly and time intensive than de novo drug discovery.This study used a treatment repurposing methodology,the literature-related discovery and innovation(LRDI)text mining system,to identify potential treatments(developed for non-IBD diseases)with sufficient promise for extrapolation to treatment of IBD.By searching for desirable patterns of twenty key biomarkers relevant to IBD(e.g.,inflammation,reactive oxygen species,autophagy,barrier function),the LRDI-based query retrieved approximately 9500 records from Medline.The most recent 350 records were further analyzed for proof-of-concept.Approximately 18%(64/350)met the criteria for discovery(not previously studied in IBD human or animal models)and relevance for application to IBD treatment.Many of the treatments were compounds derived from herbal remedies,and the majority of treatments were being studied in cancer,diabetes,and central nervous system disease,such as depression and dementia.As further validation of the search strategy,the query identified ten treatments that have just recently begun testing in IBD models in the last three years.Literature-related discovery and innovation text mining contains a unique search strategy with tremendous potential to identify treatments for repurposing.A more comprehensive query with additional key biomarkers would have retrieved many thousands more records,further increasing the yield of IBD treatment repurposing discovery.
基金supported by the Ph D Start-up Fund of Guangdong Medical University(Grant No.:B2019016)Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Guangdong Province(Grant No.:20201180)+4 种基金Science and Technology Special Project of Zhanjiang(Project No.:2019A01009)Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province(Grant No.:2016B030309002)Basic and Applied Basic Research Program of Guangdong Province(Grant No.:2019A1515110201)Educational Commission of Guangdong Province(Grant No.:4SG20138G)Fund of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory(Zhanjiang)(Grant No.:ZJW-2019-007)。
文摘Since December 2019,severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has been found to be the culprit in the coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19),causing a global pandemic.Despite the existence of many vaccine programs,the number of confirmed cases and fatalities due to COVID-19 is still increasing.Furthermore,a number of variants have been reported.Because of the absence of approved anticoronavirus drugs,the treatment and management of COVID-19 has become a global challenge.Under these circumstances,drug repurposing is an effective method to identify candidate drugs with a shorter cycle of clinical trials.Here,we summarize the current status of the application of drug repurposing in COVID-19,including drug repurposing based on virtual computer screening,network pharmacology,and bioactivity,which may be a beneficial COVID-19 treatment.
文摘Dose is one of the parameters that any pharmacologist seriously considers when studying the effects of a drug.If the necessary dose to achieve a desired pharmacological effect is in a toxic or very toxic range for human use,the drug will probably fall out from further research.The concentration that a drug can reach to its target organ or cell is a direct consequence of the administered dose and its pharmacodynamic properties.Basic researchers investigate at the cellular level or eventually with xenografts.They use different concentrations of the drug in order to determine its cellular effects.However,in many cases,these concentrations require doses that are in the toxic range or well beyond any clinically achievable level.Therefore,in these cases,research is in the realm of toxicology rather than therapeutics.This paper will show some examples about this exercise in futility which is time and resource consuming but that pullulates the pages of many prestigious journals.Many seasoned researchers seem to have forgotten the Paracelsus Paradox.
文摘The COVID-19 global health disaster has caused more than two million deaths globally.Although,a new therapeutic molecule has not been developed for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2)as of yet.As a result,some medications that had been previously authorized for use against SARS-CoV-2 could now be given to COVID-19 patients.The use of medications to treat COVID-19 is discussed in this publication.The report also discusses the lessons learned when using combination therapy,convalescent plasma therapy,immunotherapeutic molecules,and therapeutic molecules to treat COVID-19 patients.Several beneficial outcomes were noted with anti-viral therapy and immunotherapy.The COVID-19 medicine and vaccination have undergone 9,037 clinical trials since July 2022.It may be possible to provide COVID-19 patients with a successful outcome through the short-term repurposing of an existing drug.The evaluation of potential antiviral molecules can thus lead to more clinical trials being initiated.