Integrated Role of Nanotechnology and Pharmacogenetics in Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases

“One size fits all” is an erroneous paradigm in drug delivery, due to side effects/adverse effects and variability observed in drug response. The variability is a result of geneotypic variations (variability in genomic constitution) which is studied in the branch of science called Pharmacogenomics. The variability in drug response is studied by multigene analysis or profiling of whole-genome single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and is recorded in terms of the pharmacokinetic (absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination) and pharmacodynamic (drug-receptor interaction, immune response, etc.) response of the drug. Therefore, a foray into this research area can provide valuable information for designing of drug therapies, identifying disease etiology, therapeutic targets and biomarkers for application in treatment and diagnosis of diseases. Lately, with the integration of pharmacogenomics and nanotechnology, a new facade for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases has opened up, and the prescription pattern of drugs has moved to pharmacotyping (individualized dose and dosage-form adjusted therapy) using nanoplatforms like nanobioconjugates, nanotheranostics, etc.

Cell-based 3D bionic screening by mimicking the drug–receptor interaction environment in vivo

A cell-based screening method for drug lead target capture using a microcarrier covered with highly expressed receptor cells as a 3D biomimetic framework.

Roles of Fluorine in Drug Design and Drug Action

The article discusses the basic properties of fluorine atom that have made it so useful in drug development. It presents several examples of therapeutically useful drugs acting against many life-threatening diseases along with the mechanism as to how fluorine influences the drug activity. It has been pointed out that fluorine, due to its ability to increase the lipophilicity of the molecule, greatly affects the hydrophobic interaction between the drug molecule and the receptor. Because of its small size, it hardly produces any steric effect, rather due to electronic properties enters into electrostatic and hydrogen-bond interactions. Thus, it greatly affects the drug-receptor interaction and leads to increase the activity of the drugs.

Docking studies of 3,5-disubstituted thiazolidinedione chalcones as PPAR-? agonist

PPARs play crucial role in the regulation of cellular differentiation, development and metabolism of carbohydrates, lipids and proteins in human, of which PPAR- ? has pivotal role in glucose homeostasis. In modern drug designing, molecular docking is routinely used for understanding drug receptor interaction. In the present study molecular docking were performed on a diverse set of 3,5-disubstituted thiazolidinedione chalcone derivatives that demonstrate antidiabetic activity by stimulating PPAR- ?. Among the designed analogues, e3, a3, b3 and c3 showed significant binding free energy of -12.29, -12.04, -11.53 and -11.45 kcal/mol with predicted inhibitory constant values of 987.38 pM, 1.5, 3.53 and 4.04 nM respectively and all the selected compounds were compared with standard drug Rosiglitazone.