Protease medical importance

For example, Asuri and his co-workers (Asuri et al., 2007) reported that the proteases attached to the surface of SWCNTs can create self-cleaning surfaces that resist protein adsorption. This kind of SWCNT-enzyme composite exhibited 30 times higher overall catalytic activity than control composites where the proteases were conjugated to a non-nanoscale graphite support. Importantly, the enzymes preserved more than 90% of their initial activity over 30% days in the liquid buffer, with only negligible amounts of enzymes leaching out. The result demonstrates that the nanocomposites of SWCNTs and polymers can act as hosts for enzymes and can prevent protein contamination on the surface of medical devices. We consider that SWCNTs may have the function as biocatalyst to improve the enzyme activity attached to the surface of CNTs. Our previous work also indirectly hints that CNTs could improve the bioactivity of enzymes such as Taq enzyme Cui et al. (2004). However, there are also adverse reports. CNTs can... 

For centuries we have been using observation and theory for medical research as these were the two pillars on which science was built. The third pillar of science, computation, and hence simulation, was adopted a few decades ago for science and engineering disciplines. The HIV protease inhibitors, the AIDS drugs, have been among the first important pharmaceutical molecules to be based partly on rational molecular design on computers, and work continues using the same laws of motion of Newton, often refined by quantum mechanical calculation. 

The requirement for the new approaches to control the delivery of the compounds such as peptides, proteins, plasmid DNA, antisense oligodeoxynucleotides, and immunotoxins has been created through the development of different advanced medications over the previous decade. Their ability to get the targeted regions is important for the activity of these molecules, nevertheless, once they enter into the body system proteases or DNA-degrading enzymes in vivo simply degraded the mentioned polymers [65]. 

The first section consists of three chapters covering the medical uses of boron. Chapter 1 by Lesnikowski describes some of the properties of boron clusters that are important for medical applications and presents some examples of boron clusters in different types of medical applications. The following two chapters describe bioactivity of two specific types of boron compounds carbaboranyl phosphonates (in Chapter 2 by Stadlbauer and Hey-Hawkins) and metal bis(dicarbollides) (Chapter 3 by Konvalinka et al). The former compounds are active as pesticides, bactericides and gameticides, while the later are useful as inhibitors of HIV protease. Both classes have been studied as boron delivery agents for boron neutron capture therapy in cancer treatment. 

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