Caspases: a drug discovery perspective.
Recent advances in the elucidation of the biochemical machinery of apoptosis have allowed us to appreciate the significance of unscheduled apoptosis in a wide range of human diseases and disorders, such as ischemic stroke, traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer's disease, drug-induced liver injury and cardiac ischemia. One of the most exciting advances in this area has been the discovery that a family of intracellular cysteine proteinases (caspases) plays a central role in the apoptosis cascade. Various caspase inhibitors (peptide or protein) have demonstrated abilities to strongly suppress unscheduled apoptotic cell death both in vitro and in vivo. Thus, there is potential to exploit the therapeutic values of caspase inhibition.
Wang
K K
KK
Department of Neuroscience Therapeutics, Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research, Ann Arbor, MI 48105, USA. kevin.wang@wl.com