Natural Products Extracted from Fungal Species as New Potential Anti-Cancer Drugs: A Structure-Based Drug Repurposing Approach Targeting HDAC7

Mushrooms can be considered a valuable source of natural bioactive compounds with potential polypharmacological effects due to their proven antimicrobial, antiviral, antitumor, and antioxidant activities. In order to identify new potential anticancer compounds, an in-house chemical database of molecules extracted from both edible and non-edible fungal species was employed in a virtual screening against the isoform 7 of the Histone deacetylase (HDAC). This target is known to be implicated in different cancer processes, and in particular in both breast and ovarian tumors. In this work, we proposed the ibotenic acid as lead compound for the development of novel HDAC7 inhibitors, due to its antiproliferative activity in human breast cancer cells (MCF-7). These promising results represent the starting point for the discovery and the optimization of new HDAC7 inhibitors and highlight the interesting opportunity to apply the “drug repositioning” paradigm also to natural compounds deriving from mushrooms.     

Almost Diagonalization of $$\tau $$ τ -Pseudodifferential Operators with Symbols in Wiener Amalgam and Modulation Spaces

Journal of Fourier Analysis and Applications - In this paper we focus on the almost-diagonalization properties of $$\tau $$ -pseudodifferential operators using techniques from time-frequency...     

Hydroformylation of high polymers

A new class of polymeric materials has been prepared and subjected to preliminary evaluation. These materials were obtained by hydroformylation of diene-based polymers. The olefinic bonds were saturated and aldehyde groups attached. The extent of reaction may be varied at will up to 100% double bond conversion. The properties of these polymers are dominated by the active aldehyde groups. One of the chief characteristics of simple aldehydes is their ability to polymerize forming mainly aldehyde trimers and tetramers. This same phenomenon has been shown to occur with polymeric aldehydes with consequent gel formation. The gelling tendency has been closely related to the aldehyde content per unit volume which may be conveniently varied by (1) the concentration of the initial polymer, (2) the degree of unsaturation in the polymer, and (3) the extent of double bond conversion. Any combination which gives a free aldehyde concentration in excess of 1 × 10^?4 mole/ml. is very prone to gel. The loose gels can be readily reversed by conditions which depolymerize aldehydes. The propensity of the aldehyde polymers to crosslink upon evaporation of the solvent was used to form films. These films were not discolored by ultraviolet light but under such treatment became quite brittle. The products may be stabilized by conversion of the aldehyde groups to more stable derivative, in particular the acetal. The extent of acetal formation has been shown to be controlled by steric factors. Complete polyacetal formation was possible only when the aldehyde groups were well dispersed along the polymer chain. Certain aldehyde derivatives (acetals, oximes) are thermoplastic. They soften at lower temperature than commercial plastics.