This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of zinc sulphate both in vitro and in an animal model against both strains of old world cutaneous leishmaniasis. The in vitro sensitivities of promastigotes and axenic amastigotes of both Leishmania major and L. tropica to zinc sulphate was determined, the LD50 calculated and compared to the standard treatment for cutaneous leishmaniasis pen...

Zinc and its alloys seem to be promising candidates for biodegradable applications. Those materials are often modified by other elements or compounds in order enhance their properties. The combination of zinc apatites is challenging several reasons. However, the advantages connected with biological aspects suggest need further research into such materials. In this study, three zinc-based compos...

Zinc oxide can be called a multifunctional material thanks to its unique physical and chemical properties. The first part of this paper presents the most important methods of preparation of ZnO divided into metallurgical and chemical methods. The mechanochemical process, controlled precipitation, sol-gel method, solvothermal and hydrothermal method, method using emulsion and microemulsion envir...

N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors belong to the family of ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs) that mediate the majority of fast excitatory synaptic transmission in the mammalian brain. One of the hallmarks for the function of NMDA receptors is that their ion channel activity is allosterically regulated by binding of modulator compounds to the extracellular amino-terminal domain (ATD) di...

Biological mobile zinc and nitric oxide (NO) are two prominent examples of inorganic compounds involved in numerous signaling pathways in living systems. In the past decade, a synergy of regulation, signaling, and translocation of these two species has emerged in several areas of human physiology, providing additional incentive for developing adequate detection systems for Zn(II) ions and NO in...

Zinc cluster proteins (or binuclear cluster proteins) possess zinc fingers of the Zn(II)2Cys6-type involved in DNA recognition as exemplified by the well-characterized protein Gal4p. These fungal proteins are transcriptional regulators of genes involved in a wide variety of cellular processes including metabolism of compounds such as amino acids and sugars, as well as control of meiosis, multi-...

Within this study, a unique 3D structure-based pharmacophore model of the enzyme glyoxalase-1 (Glo-1) has been revealed. Glo-1 is considered a zinc metalloenzyme in which the inhibitor binding with zinc atom at the active site is crucial. To our knowledge, this is the first pharmacophore model that has a selective feature for a "zinc binding group" which has been customized within the structure...

Complexes of zinc with picolinic and aspartic acids inhibit key steps of HSV-1 replication affecting different virus-specific targets. As was recently demonstrated by us, the pavine alkaloid (-)-thalimonine irreversibly inhibits HSV-1 infection in cultured cells. The aim of the present study was the evaluation of the combined effect of zinc complexes and (-)-thalimonine on uninfected and HSV-1 ...

Previously, we have reported that 1- and 3-isoTQENs (N,N,N',N'-tetrakis(1- or 3-isoquinolylmethyl)ethylenediamines) exhibit a specific fluorescence enhancement toward zinc ion. In this study, three methoxy-substituted derivatives of 1-isoTQEN were synthesized and their fluorescent response toward zinc ion was studied. The substitution pattern of the methoxy group significantly changes the solub...

Wnts are the major ligands responsible for activating Wnt signaling pathway through binding to Frizzled proteins (Fzd) as the receptors. Among these ligands, Wnt2 plays the main role in the tumorigenesis of several human cancers especially colorectal cancer (CRC). Therefore, it can be considered as a potential drug target.The aim of this study was to identify potential drug candidates ...