Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutics Commons^™

Elucidation Of Micro/Nanoplastic Signature Of Human And Murine Lung Tissue Utilizing Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry, Aerlin D. Decker

Pharmaceutical Sciences ETDs

Micro-and Nanoplastics (MNPs) are ubiquitous biological pollutants that have been identified throughout a variety of biological samples. MNPs have been detected in several human tissues, such as the brain, kidneys, and liver. Lung tissue remains understudied for MNP accumulation despite the large surface area and clear path for exposure. Using Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (Py-GC/MS), human lung tissue was evaluated for 12 different polymers, enabling quantification of total plastic per gram of tissue to be identified. Further analysis was performed with Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) to investigate heavy metal accumulation in human lung samples and determine whether a …

Neuroinflammatory And Metabolomic Temporal Dynamics From Inhaled Wildfire Smoke With Attenuation Via Pharmacological Intervention, David Scieszka

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Wildfire smoke is a global issue affecting nearly all humans on the surface of this Earth. Smoke dispersion from wildfires can span continents and cross oceans with amazing ease. Furthermore, total acres of land burned per year in the United States has roughly doubled since 1980, meaning this issue will persist for an indeterminate amount of time. Exposure to wildfire smoke is hazardous and promotes aging-associated events in the cardiopulmonary systems. Yet long- and short-term effects on the brain remain relatively unknown. From these, it is critically important to understand the neurological impacts from wildfire smoke exposure; to compare these …

Evaluating The Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor As A Target For Pharmacologic Activity Of Repurposed Drugs, Teofilo Borunda Duque

Pharmaceutical Sciences ETDs

The discovery of new pharmacologic targets is important for the advancement of pharmacotherapy and identification of new indications for current drugs. The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) is a physiologic sensor of both chemical environmental pollutants and ligands of natural origin. Given the broad spectrum of ligands that activate the AHR and its relationship with toxicology, the AHR is not thought to be a traditional target for pharmacotherapy. However, multiple studies have shown potential for the AHR as a novel pharmacologic target Therefore, identifying less toxic agents that modulate the AHR may elucidate mechanisms for pharmacological targeting of the AHR. The …

Network Inference Driven Drug Discovery, Gergely Zahoránszky-Kőhalmi, Tudor I. Oprea, Cristian G. Bologa, Subramani Mani, Oleg Ursu

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

The application of rational drug design principles in the era of network-pharmacology requires the investigation of drug-target and target-target interactions in order to design new drugs. The presented research was aimed at developing novel computational methods that enable the efficient analysis of complex biomedical data and to promote the hypothesis generation in the context of translational research. The three chapters of the Dissertation relate to various segments of drug discovery and development process.

The first chapter introduces the integrated predictive drug discovery platform „SmartGraph”. The novel collaborative-filtering based algorithm „Target Based Recommender (TBR)” was developed in the framework of this …