Signal Transduction and Relevant Drugs

Dear Colleagues, 

Signal transduction networks are precisely regulated in space and time, safeguarding the net outcome of several physiological processes, including cardiac contractility, blood sugar regulation, learning and memory, inflammation, breathing, and smooth muscle tone. Dysregulation of the fine-tuning of these processes leads to a diverse range of degenerative disorders such as asthma, COPD, IPF, cancer, heart failure, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Key players in compartmentalized signaling networks are protein kinases and phosphatases, phosphodiesterases, cytoskeleton regulators, scaffolding proteins, G protein-coupled receptors and transient receptor potential channels, thereby creating a novel dimension of signaling bias. The adaptation of such biased devices likely addresses several preclinical challenges of modern drug discovery.

In a similar fashion, evolutionary medicine has gained tremendous interest in the context of health management, healthy aging and precision medicine in the framework of the worldwide aging population. The field aims to apply modern evolutionary theory to understand health and disease. Modern medical research and practice has focused on the molecular and physiological mechanisms underlying health and disease, while evolutionary medicine focuses on the question of why evolution has shaped these mechanisms in ways that may leave us susceptible to disease. The evolutionary approach has driven important advances in our understanding of ageing, autoimmune diseases, cancer, host–pathogen interactions and resistance. Evolutionary medicine is characterized by concepts such as worms and bacteria offering protection against autoimmune diseases, and that chronic inflammation caused, for example, by repeated exposure to infectious disease correlates with the development of cancer. Multi-disciplinary approaches combining classical fields such as molecular medicine and cell science with emerging strategies in evolutionary medicine represent a tremendously powerful tool for the future, covering patients’ need to alleviate symptoms of chronic disorders. To further accelerate the impact of drug screening platforms, the inclusion of microfluidic devices, organoids and stem-cell technology potentially open new avenues. Such strategies will certainly improve the process of personalized drug identification.

Prof. Dr. Martina Schmidt
Guest Editor

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