Drug Candidates for the Treatment of Immune Disease 2023
A special issue of Pharmaceuticals (ISSN 1424-8247). This special issue belongs to the section "Medicinal Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 26 July 2024 | Viewed by 4822
Special Issue Editor
Interests: medicinal chemistry; organic synthesis; asymmetric synthesis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Diseases involving immune disorders are a major problem in medicine, not only because of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and Crohn’s disease, but also because of the need to prevent transplant rejection and the effects of anticancer therapy. The medical armamentarium comprises a large number of substances that perform relatively well in helping patients to control these problems: corticosteroids, anticancer drugs with immunosuppressive properties (methotrexate, azathioprine, etc.), ciclosporin, rapalogues, monoclonal antibodies and several enzyme inhibitors. However, there are still numerous problems regarding the use of these drugs, and among them, side effects (especially opportunistic infections and cancers) and narrow therapeutic indices are the most severe. The research in this field should continue to find new compounds that will be safer for fighting these chronic pathological situations.
A significant number of drugs acting on the immune system have been approved, and most of them are enzyme inhibitors. These enzymes are involved in the synthesis of nucleic acid bases (e.g., inosine-5′-monophosphate dehydrogenase for mycophenolic acid and dihydroorotate dehydrogenase for leflunomide) or in signaling pathways (e.g., mTOR and JAK). However, to avoid side effects, it is clear that future immunomodulators should have more specific actions on the precise mechanisms involved in the immune disorders in order to limit life-threatening side effects.
Several enzymes have recently been described as potential new targets in autoimmune disorders. They represent new hopes for drugs having both high efficacy and safety. The biggest challenge remains obtaining selective and potent inhibitors of these enzymes. Since 2000, a series of attractive targets have been identified, such as indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1, cyclic GMP-AMP synthase, pyruvate kinase M2 and arginase 1.
We are pleased to welcome papers reviewing the most recent research on this topic in the present thematic Special Issue.
We look forward to your contributions.
Dr. Francois Dufrasne
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- immune system
- immune disease
- drugs
