Plaque formation in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is seeded by excision products of Amyloid precursor protein (APP) generated by the combined activities of beta and gamma secretases. To reduce the production of these neurotoxic peptides the inhibition of beta-secretase (Beta-site APP Cleaving Enzyme, BACE1, Swiss-Prot P56817) is being intensively pursued as a possible therapy for AD and all drug candidates are screened for selectivity against the paralogue (BACE2, Swiss-Prot Q9Y5Z0) which...

Further details of the book can be found at http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470181052.html and on Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=4H_ai7ivRIcC&pg=PP1&dq=structural+bioin... .

Gregory Rose from PharmExperts.com interviews J. Buccafusco (Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA) about his development of new anti-Altzheimer drugs, designed to act by multiple mechanisms to improve congnition. Desensitization of nicotinic receptors is one of the novel approaches proposed by Buccafusco. Three of his compounds are currently in advanced preclinical evaluation.

Peter Amoako Yirenkyi from Kwame Nkrumah University in Kumasi, Ghana discusses his work in distributed computing for drug discovery at the ICTP workshop on Using Open Access Models for Scientific Dissemination

Andy McCammon discusses "Computational Science and Drug Discovery" at The Minority-Serving Institutions Cyberinfrastructure Institute (MSICI2) Preliminary Program at the San Diego Supercomputing Center, University of California San Diego La Jolla, California | June 26-29, 2006

RNA editing ligase 1 (TbREL1) is required for the survival of both the insect and bloodstream forms of Trypanosoma brucei, the parasite responsible for the devastating tropical disease African sleeping sickness. The type of RNA editing that TbREL1 is involved in is unique to the trypanosomes, and no close human homolog is known to exist. In addition, the high-resolution crystal structure revealed several unique features of the active site, making this enzyme a promising target for...

Rommie Amaro, Computational and Theoretical Biophysical Chemist, discusses how she uses the resources at SDSC to conduct her drug discovery research on African Sleeping Sickness. Originally posted by SDSC on SDSC's CI Channel at: www.cichannel.org