Proceedings of the International Symposium on Polymer Therapeutics - Recent Progress in Clinics and Future Prospects, held July 13-14, 2001, in Nara, Japan.

The technology of polymer science has developed considerably during the past half-century, and this volume describes some of the aspects of this technology that will have a great impact in the future. Among these advances, for example, are gene delivery to specific disease sites and carrier polymers that respond to a stimulus or particular environment. Cancer targeted drug delivery is another focused area of this volume because of the important nature of EPR-effect of polymer drugs in tumor. Included are discussions of as many examples as possible of polymer drugs that have achieved, or are close to clinical use. The concept of "Polymer drugs" here is limited to primarily injectable and water-soluble agents, although also covered are some drugs in micellar form or liposomes.

This book is intended for students and researchers in the field of pharmacology who have particular interests in drug delivery, targeting, and formulation, as well as for clinicians such as oncologists who are interested in the field. People who work at regulatory agencies should also be aware such that drugs with great potential are being developed and will be beneficial to many patients, as well as to health insurance agencies because of improved cost effectiveness.

The 20th century has witnessed the great benefits of the development of antibi otics, which became a reality after World War IL More than 50 years ago I witnessed the miraculous therapeutic power of penicillin, when I was a student at the Tohoku University Medical School's Department of Bacteriology in Sendai, Japan. The late Dr. Kondo was a graduate student in the department at that time and developed the first crude penicillin preparation in Japan which was applied with dramatic results in two patients. Although there was patient-family consent at that time, ethics committees, randomization. mutagenesis tests, distribution studies, purity-criteria, and phar macokinetics were not yet in existence. Today, regulatory procedures have com plicated the whole drug-approval process. For example, any new antibiotics that have been proven effective in laboratory studies against gram-negative bacteria, as might exist in deadly plague bacteria, must still undergo a long and enormously costly regulatory process before they can be introduced to benefit society, and before government insurance can be applied.

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Polymer Therapeutics - Recent Progress in Clinics and Future Prospects, held July 13-14, 2001, in Nara, Japan. The technology of polymer science has developed considerably during the past half-century, and this volume describes some of the aspects of this technology that will have a great impact in the future. Among these advances, for example, are gene delivery to specific disease sites and carrier polymers that respond to a stimulus or particular environment. Cancer targeted drug delivery is another focused area of this volume because of the important nature of EPR-effect of polymer drugs in tumor. Included are discussions of as many examples as possible of polymer drugs that have achieved, or are close to clinical use. The concept of "Polymer drugs" here is limited to primarily injectable and water-soluble agents, although also covered are some drugs in micellar form or liposomes. This book is intended for students and researchers in the field of pharmacology who have particular interests in drug delivery, targeting, and formulation, as well as for clinicians such as oncologists who are interested in the field. People who work at regulatory agencies should also be aware such that drugs with great potential are being developed and will be beneficial to many patients, as well as to health insurance agencies because of improved cost effectiveness.

Nitric Oxide (NO) an endogenous free radical, has been shown recently to mediate several important biological effects. It plays a neuro-transmitter like role in vascular endothelium, a scond-messenger role in N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) responsive neurons in the central nervous system (CNS), a neurotoxic role after its release from these neurons, and a cytotoxic role after its release by macrophages.
This volume reviews among other topics the basic chemistry and physical properties of S-nitrosothiols (RS-NO) and their biochemical mechanisms of action, NO synthase isozymes, NO synthase structure, mechanisms of NO synthesis, regulation of NOS expression and posttranslational modification, and mechanisms involving NO of CNS's damage in virus infections.

This book describes the lifelong research experience of a scientist, from the beginning studies of protein chemistry to the development of a protein drug. Also discussed herein include the invention of the first polymer conjugate drug poly(styrene-co-maleic acid (SMA) conjugated to NCS, GBP called SMANCS. The author, having acquired knowledge of proteases and inhibitors, pioneered investigations of microbial proteases in the pathogenesis of bacterial infection. The author -s group, using a polymer-conjugated enzyme, discovered an enormous burst in the generation of superoxide anion radical during influenza virus infection by the generation of xanthine oxidase, which was found to be the major cause of the pathogenesis of this viral infection, which progressed even after the virus was eradiated.