Peptides as Therapeutic Agents: Challenges and Opportunities in the Green Transition Era.

Peptides are at the cutting edge of contemporary research for new potent, selective, and safe therapeutical agents. Their rise has reshaped the pharmaceutical landscape, providing solutions to challenges that traditional small molecules often cannot address. A wide variety of natural and modified peptides have been obtained and studied, and many others are advancing in clinical trials, covering multiple therapeutic areas. As the demand for peptide-based therapies grows, so does the need for sustainable and environmentally friendly synthesis methods. Traditional peptide synthesis, while effective, often involves environmentally draining processes, generating significant waste and consuming vast resources. The integration of green chemistry offers sustainable alternatives, prioritizing eco-friendly processes, waste reduction, and energy conservation. This review delves into the transformative potential of applying green chemistry principles to peptide synthesis by discussing relevant examples of the application of such approaches to the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) with a peptide structure and how these efforts are critical for an effective green transition era in the pharmaceutical field.

Comparative neuropsychological profile of pathological gambling, hypersexuality, and compulsive eating in Parkinson's disease.

BACKGROUND: Impulse control disorders (ICDs), in particular pathological gambling, hypersexuality, and compulsive eating, are being increasingly identified in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. Pathological gambling has been associated with frontal/executive dysfunctions, whereas hypersexuality and compulsive eating, and their relation with cognitive dysfunctions, have not been investigated in PD. METHODS: We investigated cognitive correlates underpinning pathological gambling, hypersexuality, and compulsive eating in PD. PD outpatients were screened for pathological gambling, hypersexuality, and compulsive eating. Based on clinical criteria, we identified 13 patients with hypersexuality, 12 with compulsive eating, 14 with pathological gambling, and 10 with multiple ICDs. Fourteen PD patients matched for age and education without ICDs served as controls. Clinical features and neuropsychiatric and neuropsychological functioning were assessed in the 5 groups. RESULTS: Demographic, clinical, neuropsychiatric, and neurological aspects did not differ among groups. All 4 groups of ICD patients were impaired on tasks exploring spatial-planning and set-shifting tasks compared with the controls. The main difference among patients with pathological gambling, hypersexuality, and compulsive eating was that patients with hypersexuality were more impaired on the Stroop test than patients with pathological gambling. Individuals with hypersexuality, compulsive eating, and multiple ICDs performed worse on verbal learning and memory tests than did patients with pathological gambling. DISCUSSION: ICDs are associated with impaired cognitive functions; the severity of impairment decreased in the order multiple ICDs and hypersexuality > compulsive eating > pathological gambling. Our findings support the idea that hypersexuality is associated with prefrontal and memory dysfunctions, whereas pathological gambling seems to be related only to frontal dysfunction. NS065070

Cognitive dysfunctions and pathological gambling in patients with Parkinson's disease.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the neuropsychological correlates of pathological gambling (PG) in Parkinson's disease (PD). Fifteen patients with PD affected by PG (identified based on DSM-IV criteria; PD+PG) without clinically evident dementia were compared with 15 nondemented patients with PD not affected by PG (PD-PG). Two groups of patients with PD were matched for age, length of education, and gender. Clinical and neuropsychiatric features were assessed; several cognitive domains, mainly related to executive functions, were explored by means of standardized neuropsychological tasks. PD+PG and PD-PG did not differ on clinical and neuropsychiatric aspects. PD+PG patients performed significantly worse than PD-PG patients on cognitive tasks that evaluated visuo-spatial long-term memory and several frontal lobe functions. After Bonferroni correction, differences remained significant on the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) (P = 0.001), on phonological fluency task (P = 0.003), and on the Trail Making Test, part B minus part A (P = 0.002). Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that low scores on the FAB were the only independent predictor of PG (odds ratio, 27.9; 95% CI: 2.82-277.95, P = 0.004). The results indicate an association between PG and frontal lobe dysfunctions in nondemented patients with PD. Low scores on the FAB indicate patients with PD at high risk for PG.