Small molecule activators of the Trk receptors for neuroprotection

The neurotophin signaling network is critical to the development and survival of many neuronal populations. Especially sensitive to imbalances in the neurotrophin system, cholinergic neurons in the basal forebrain are progressively lost in Alzheimer's disease. Therapeutic use of neurotrophins to prevent this loss is hampered, however, by a number of pharmacological challenges. These include a lack of transport across the blood-brain barrier, rapid degradation in the circulation, and difficulty in production. In this review we discuss the evidence supporting the neurotrophin system's role in preventing neurodegeneration and survey some of the pharmacological strategies being pursued to develop effective therapeutics targeting neurotrophin function

The disruption of proteostasis in neurodegenerative diseases

Cells count on surveillance systems to monitor and protect the cellular proteome which, besides being highly heterogeneous, is constantly being challenged by intrinsic and environmental factors. In this context, the proteostasis network (PN) is essential to achieve a stable and functional proteome. Disruption of the PN is associated with aging and can lead to and/or potentiate the occurrence of many neurodegenerative diseases (ND). This not only emphasizes the importance of the PN in health span and aging but also how its modulation can be a potential target for intervention and treatment of human diseases.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Multimedia group communications: towards new services

Interpersonal communication among a group of users employing different media types is becoming more and more widespread in computing and telecommunications. Group communication places a variety of new requirements onto the underlying communications architecture and although many existing protocols and services do offer some limited support for multicast group communication, these new requirements make it difficult to find efficient and comprehensive solutions. The impact of multimedia group communication on the communication system and the way in which existing systems, international standardization bodies and researchers cope with these challenges is the subject of this paper. First the characteristics and requirements of multimedia group applications are discussed and illustrated by examples of existing group applications. Subsequently a survey of the kind of support available in today's communication system is presented. In addition the ongoing discussion about the standardization of group communication within ISO and ITU and the direction these efforts take is briefly summarized. Further, some selected examples of research projects which deal with different communication and protocol related aspects of multimedia group communication are presented which give an indication of the trends in this area