Monday 27 September 2010

Issue focus "Antibiotics versus resistant bacteria: recent patents"

In celebration of 20 years of Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents, we are delighted to introduce the October issue Guest Edited by Dr Herbert A. Kirst who has supported the journal on its Editorial Board since its early days. For this issue, Dr Kirst has selected a series of reviews discussing results from recent research devoted to finding new antibacterial agents that will improve treatment of infectious diseases, including those caused by strains resistant to current antibiotics.

In his Editorial, Dr Kirst comments that 20 years of calls for action have slowly been heeded since resistance problems first became widely recognized in the late 1980s and early 1990s prompted by the unexpected appearance of resistance to vancomycin.

The reviews in this issue reflect the current state of the competition between evolution of resistance to antimicrobial agents and the development of new agents to overcome such resistance by describing a variety of recent research efforts that have led to new antibacterial agents that are now proceeding through development and regulatory pathways.

We hope you will find the articles insightful and thought provoking.

Friday 24 September 2010

Special Issue Alert: Transporter-drug interactions and transporter-mediated toxicity in the liver/hepatocyte

Drug Metabolism Reviews

August 2010 Vol. 42, No. 3.

From the Editor-in-Chief:

In the last 20 years, transporters have become the target of many investigations. Their roles in the disposition and development of drugs have been recognized by scientific researchers, drug authorities, and clinicians. The wide substrate specificity or "unspecificity" of these proteins, their presence in many membranes, and their contribution to pharmacokinetics have produced a lot of, as yet, unanswered questions. It has turned out that these proteins may also be the base of drug-drug interactions in human therapy. The investigation of mutations of transporters may contribute to understanding the mechanism of some human diseases. Transporters are also potential targets of new drugs. This special issue edited by Dr. Laszlo Vereczkey, contains seven articles that may be of interest to people dealing with the structure, regulation, activity, and clinical significance of these proteins.

Jack Hinson