Bloom Mollerup (footmarch62)

PnPP-19 peptide has a primary sequence design based on molecular modeling studies of PnTx2-6 toxin. It comprises the amino acid residues that are potentially significant for the pharmacological action of PnTx2-6. Ex vivo and in vivo experiments in normotensive, hypertensive, or diabetic murine models have shown a significant improvement in penile erection after administration of PnPP-19. Given the potential use of PnPP-19 in pharmaceutical formulations to treat erectile dysfunction and the lack of information concerning its mode of action, the present work investigates its activities on the nitrergic system. PnPP-19 induced a significant increase in nitric oxide (NO) and cGMP levels in corpus cavernosum (cc). These effects were inhibited by l-NAME, a non-selective inhibitor of nitric oxide synthase (NOS); were partially inhibited by 7- Nitroindazole, a selective inhibitor of neuronal NOS (nNOS); and were abolished by L-NIL, a selective inhibitor of inducible NOS (iNOS). This potentiating effect was not affected by atropine. PnPP-19 also led to changes in mRNA levels, protein expression and phosphorylation at specific sites of NOS, in cc. Assays using cavernous tissue from knockout mice to endothelial NOS (eNOS), nNOS or iNOS showed that PnPP-19 potentiates relaxation only in eNOS-knockout mice, which suggests an essential role for nNOS. Surprisingly, iNOS enhanced the potentiation of erectile function evoked by PnPP-19. Our results demonstrate that this new synthetic peptide potentiates erectile function via nitric oxide activation and reinforce its role as a new pharmacological tool for the treatment of erectile dysfunction.Enabling precision medicine requires developing robust patient stratification methods as well as drugs tailored to homogeneous subgroups of patients from a heterogeneous population. Developing de novo drugs is expensive and time consuming with an ultimately low FDA approval rate. These limitations make developing new drugs for a small portion of a disease population unfeasible. Therefore, drug repositioning is an essential alternative for developing new drugs for a disease subpopulation. This shows the importance of developing data-driven approaches that find druggable homogeneous subgroups within the disease population and reposition the drugs for these subgroups. In this study, we developed an explainable AI approach for patient stratification and drug repositioning. Contrast pattern mining and network analysis were used to discover homogeneous subgroups within a disease population. For each subgroup, a biomedical network analysis was done to find the drugs that are most relevant to a given subgroup of patients. The set of candidate drugs for each subgroup was ranked using an aggregated drug score assigned to each drug. The proposed method represents a human-in-the-loop framework, where medical experts use the data-driven results to generate hypotheses and obtain insights into potential therapeutic candidates for patients who belong to a subgroup. Colorectal cancer (CRC) was used as a case study. Patients' phenotypic and genotypic data was utilized with a heterogeneous knowledge base because it gives a multi-view perspective for finding new indications for drugs outside of their original use. Our analysis of the top candidate drugs for the subgroups identified by medical experts showed that most of these drugs are cancer-related, and most of them have the potential to be a CRC regimen based on studies in the literature.Within the recent pandemic, scientists and clinicians are engaged in seeking new technology to stop or slow down the COVID-19 pandemic. The benefit of machine learning, as an essential aspect of artificial intelligence, on past epidemics offers a new line to tackle the novel Coronavirus outbreak. Accurate short-term forecasting of COVID-19 spread plays an essential role in improving the management of the overcrowding problem in hospitals and enables appropriate optimization of the availa