Therapeutic peptides for coronary artery diseases: in silico methods and current perspectives.

Many drug formulations containing small active molecules are used for the treatment of coronary artery disease, which affects a significant part of the world's population. However, the inadequate profile of these molecules in terms of therapeutic efficacy has led to the therapeutic use of protein and peptide-based biomolecules with superior properties, such as target-specific affinity and low immunogenicity, in critical diseases. Protein‒protein interactions, as a consequence of advances in molecular techniques with strategies involving the combined use of in silico methods, have enabled the design of therapeutic peptides to reach an advanced dimension. In particular, with the advantages provided by protein/peptide structural modeling, molecular docking for the study of their interactions, molecular dynamics simulations for their interactions under physiological conditions and machine learning techniques that can work in combination with all these, significant progress has been made in approaches to developing therapeutic peptides that can modulate the development and progression of coronary artery diseases. In this scope, this review discusses in silico methods for the development of peptide therapeutics for the treatment of coronary artery disease and strategies for identifying the molecular mechanisms that can be modulated by these designs and provides a comprehensive perspective for future studies.

Stem Cell-Based Therapeutic Approaches in Genetic Diseases.

Stem cells, which can self-renew and differentiate into different cell types, have become the keystone of regenerative medicine due to these properties. With the achievement of superior clinical results in the therapeutic approaches of different diseases, the applications of these cells in the treatment of genetic diseases have also come to the fore. Foremost, conventional approaches of stem cells to genetic diseases are the first approaches in this manner, and they have brought safety issues due to immune reactions caused by allogeneic transplantation. To eliminate these safety issues and phenotypic abnormalities caused by genetic defects, firstly, basic genetic engineering practices such as vectors or RNA modulators were combined with stem cell-based therapeutic approaches. However, due to challenges such as immune reactions and inability to target cells effectively in these applications, advanced molecular methods have been adopted in ZFN, TALEN, and CRISPR/Cas genome editing nucleases, which allow modular designs in stem cell-based genetic diseases' therapeutic approaches. Current studies in genetic diseases are in the direction of creating permanent treatment regimens by genomic manipulation of stem cells with differentiation potential through genome editing tools. In this chapter, the stem cell-based therapeutic approaches of various vital genetic diseases were addressed wide range from conventional applications to genome editing tools.

Problems in Stem Cell Therapy for Cardiac Repair and Tissue Engineering Approaches Based on Graphene and Its Derivatives.

BACKGROUND: Today, coronary artery disease is still one of the most important causes of mortality despite advanced surgical methods, pharmacotherapies and organ transplantation. These treatment modalities are intended to prevent further progression of myocardial infarction and do not involve the repair of the damaged part. Therefore, stem cell therapy has emerged as a new approach for the treatment of coronary artery disease. However, there are some restrictions that limit the use of these cells for desired repair. The leading limitation is that newly formed cardiomyocytes do not provide electrical integrity with local cells. OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we review the difficulties that limit the use of stem cell therapy in cardiac repair and emphasize the importance of the integration of stem cell with tissue scaffolds with conductivity. Furthermore, significance of using graphene scaffolds in cardiac tissue engineering is highlighted due to its conductivity features. RESULT: Recently, the fabrication of tissue scaffoldings has made it possible to create a biomimetic cellular environment while providing a new approach to solving these problems in treatment. Especially, the integration of stem cell therapy with graphene-based tissue scaffolds with electrical conductivity, is one of the promising new strategies to turn the success of two approaches of tissue engineering into synergistic effect in cardiac repair. CONCLUSION: Literature analysis has demonstrated that there are some limitations in use of stem cell therapy for successful treatment of cardiac repair and graphene-based tissue engineering approaches which are promising to solve these problems in the near future.