Inaugural meeting of European network of therapeutics teachers

Gene therapy is a technique where a gene is inserted into a person’s cells to prevent or treat a serious disease. The added gene may be a healthy version of the gene that is mutated in the patient, or it could be a different gene that inactivates or compensates for the patient’s disease-causing gene. For example, in patients with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) due to a mutation in the gene for the enzyme adenosine deaminase, a functioning version of the gene can be inserted. The...

Combining two or more treatment methods increases the life span of cancer patients while reducing damage to vital organs or tissue from the overuse of a single treatment. Combination therapy also targets different cancer-inducing pathways, thus reducing the chances of developing resistance to treatment.
The combination of the drug acetazolamide and sulforaphane is a good example of combination therapy to treat cancer. The cells in the interior of a large tumor often die due to the hypoxic and...

Genetic polymorphisms in drug targets have emerged as critical determinants of interindividual variability in drug response and toxicity. Pharmacogenomic investigations increasingly focus on identifying these variations to personalize and optimize therapeutic interventions. A drug target may be a receptor, enzyme, or signaling protein involved in pharmacologic responses or disease-related pathways. While early pharmacogenetic studies focused primarily on drug metabolism, current research...

Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM) is the clinical practice of measuring specific drug levels in a patient's blood or body tissues to manage and optimize therapy. TDM is crucial for drugs with narrow therapeutic windows, like warfarin and phenytoin, where incorrect doses can lead to treatment failure or severe side effects. This monitoring ensures the dosage administered is within a safe and effective range. The factors affecting therapeutic drug monitoring include:Patient-Specific Factors:a.

EDTA titrations are usually carried out in highly basic conditions, where the fully deprotonated form of EDTA, Y4−, actively complexes with the free metal ions in the solution. Several metal ions precipitate as hydrous oxide (hydroxides, oxides, or oxyhydroxides) under these conditions, lowering the concentration of free metal ions in the solution. For this reason, auxiliary complexing agents or ligands such as ammonia, tartrate, citrate, or triethanolamine are used in EDTA titrations to...

β-adrenergic antagonists, or β-blockers, modulate the sympathetic nervous system by targeting β-adrenoceptors and inhibiting catecholamine-mediated sympathetic responses. β-blockers differ in their adrenoceptor subtype affinity, lipophilicity, and α-blocking capabilities. The history of β-blocker development began with the prototype, dichloroisoprenaline, which exhibited partial agonist activity. As a result, propranolol was developed as a pure antagonist but nonselective agent, paving the way...