Francesco Nicotra

..Taken together, all this information is useful for the design of new potential anti-tumor drugs...

..This mini-review will present examples of how to exploit carbohydrates mimics and scaffolds in drug research...

..An example of solid phase combinatorial synthesis of a library of 37 compounds is reported...

..All compounds retained Curcumin ability to bind Aβ peptide oligomers without inducing their aggregation. Moreover all Curcumin derivatives were able to stain very efficiently Aβ deposits...

..Due to the essential role of API enzymes in LPS biosynthesis and gram-negative bacteria survival, by exploiting these data, a new generation of potent antibacterial drugs could be developed...

..Our data provide important structural information for the rational design of new KdsD inhibitors as potential antibacterial drugs...

..The conformational analysis of the compounds has also been carried out through molecular mechanics (MM) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations...

..The compounds synthesized on the solid phase were tested for their antiproliferative activity on tumor cell lines...

..All the synthetic compounds were active in inhibiting nucleotide exchange on p21 human Ras in vitro, and two of them selectively inhibited Ras-dependent cell growth in vivo...

..01). Thus, these NLs appear particularly suitable for implementing further strategies for drug brain targeting...

..The 'glycosylated' hydroxypatite was characterised by its ability to interact with glucose recognising lectins...

..Both these molecules were active in inhibiting the inflammatory action of Escherichia coli lipid A on MT2 macrophages in a dose-dependent manner, while they were completely devoid of inflammatory activity...

..In the present work, we investigated the influence of plasma surface modification coupled to chemical grafting on the cell growth compliance of HA 3D scaffolds...

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..Remarkable acceleration of the glycosylation reactions (15 min-2 h compared to several hours) over reported procedures together with good yields were always observed...

..Kdo is a monsaccharide essential for OM biogenesis, OM being an essential cellular structure shared by all Gram-negative bacteria. Hence, inhibitors of its biosynthesis can have a broad-spectrum antibacterial activity...

..It appears that N(OMe)-linked disaccharide analogues exhibit a slightly different conformational behavior to their parent natural disaccharides...

..In addition, RNA interference experiments (siRNA) provide evidence of the ability of the compound to exert biological effects specifically through Akt signalling...

..Finally, we demonstrated the possibility to exploit STD-NMR and trNOESY experiments to screen extracts from natural sources for the presence of Aβ peptide ligands...

..Finally the synthesis of glycoconjugate-related iminosugars, where the "pseudoanomeric" centre is linked to amino acid or peptide residues, and iminosugar phosphonates and nucleosides have been reviewed...

..In the long term we hope that the knowledge we derive from these compounds will help in the development of an alternative therapy targeting Ras for a specific inhibition of transformed cell proliferation...

..Despite the fact that the activity was found in the micromolar range, these findings may help in elucidating the structural features of this class of enzymes of different origin, which are still scarcely characterised...

..Our data shed light on a novel mechanism of anti-amyloidogenic activity displayed by tetracycline, governed by hydrophobic and charge multiparticle interactions...

..Neoglycopeptides 1--3 could be presented to and recognized by the T cell receptor; neoglycopeptide 3, bearing two B-epitopes, was presented to the TCR with higher efficiency, compared to neoglycopeptide 2, having only one B-epitope...