Publisher's Synopsis
The twelfth volume in this well established series presents the latest research on proteinases, which are known or suspected to be implicated in many aspects of normal physiology and disease processes. In order to understand the nature of this involvement the researcher must repeatedly resort to our current understanding of proteinase inhibitors. The chapters in this book cover various approaches to the investigation and treatment of a wide variety of medical problems, including malignancy, arthritis, hypertension and coagulation disorders, viral, bacterial and parasitic infections, muscular dystrophy, pulmonary emphysema and neurological disease. Due to the level of sophistication of naturally occurring protein inhibitors, techniques such as X-ray crystallography are being used intensively, and the results are being fed back into the design of artificial inhibitors made chemically or by genetic engineering. Rapid technical progress in these synthetic methods encourages the full use of new information available, and the outcome is that a range of new drugs are in the stage of pre-clinical trials.
