MOTIVATION Potassium channels are mainly known for their role in regulating and maintaining the membrane potential. Since this is one of the key mechanisms of signal transduction, malfunction of these potassium channels leads to a wide variety of severe diseases. Thus potassium channels are priority targets of research for new drugs, despite the fact that this protein family is highly variable ...

Our studies of amorphous calcium phosphate (ACP)-based dental materials are focused on the design of bioactive, non-degradable, biocompatible, polymeric composites derived from acrylic monomer systems and ACP by photochemical or chemically activated polymerization. Their intended uses include remineralizing bases/liners, orthodontic adhesives and/or endodontic sealers. The bioactivity of these ...

In this study, a new formulation of silica nanocomposite containing nifedipine (NI) loaded freezedried solid-lipid nanoparticles (NI-SLNs) and silica have been developed with improved flowability of powders, which can lead to the formulation of a widely acceptable oral dosage form. The stable NI-SLNs were prepared using two phospholipids, hydrogenated soybean phosphatidylcholine and dipalmitoyl...

A panel of eight, second generation triazine dendrimers differing in the number of amines, guanidines, hydroxyls and aliphatic groups on the periphery was synthesized and assayed for gene transfer in an attempt to correlate the effects of surface functionality on transfection efficiency. The physicochemical and biological properties of the dendrimers and dendriplexes, such as condensation of DN...

The ability of a protein to carry out a given function results from fundamental physicochemical properties that include the protein's structure, mechanism of action, and thermodynamic stability. Traditional approaches to study these properties have typically required the direct measurement of the property of interest, oftentimes a laborious undertaking. Although protein properties can be probed...

Biodistribution of nanoparticles is dependent on their physicochemical properties (such as size, surface charge, and surface hydrophilicity). Clear and systematic understanding of nanoparticle properties' effects on their in vivo performance is of fundamental significance in nanoparticle design, development and optimization for medical applications, and toxicity evaluation. In the present study...

Aspergillus terreus is a filamentous ascomycota, which is prominent for its production of lovastatin, an antihypercholesterolemic drug. The commercial importance of lovastatin with annual sales of billions of dollars made us to focus on lovastatin biosynthetic cluster proteins. The analysis of these lovastatin biosynthetic cluster proteins with different perspectives such as physicochemical pro...

The ingestion of lactobacilli is of great importance for the probiotic effect of host gut Peyer's patches (PPs) macrophages. The present study is in time focus on the investigation of the factors determining the ingestion of lactobacilli by PPs macrophages. Physicochemical properties of cell surface and adhesive property of nine Lactobacillus strains were examined in the present work. The assoc...

The process of in vivo clot dissolution, termed thrombolysis,l is complex, involving the interaction of clot components with the surrounding plasma. Participating in this interaction are plasminogen, plasminogen activator, plasmin, the plasmin inhibitory activity of plasma, and fibrin (1). Although much is known of the nature and quantities of individual components, the complexity of the thromb...

OBJECTIVE(S) A fast and reliable evaluation of the binding energy from a single conformation of a molecular complex is an important practical task. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are strong tools for predicting nonlinear functions which are used in this paper to predict binding energy. We proposed a structure that obtains binding energy using physicochemical molecular descriptions of the sel...