University of Mainz

About: University of Mainz is a education organization based out in Mainz, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Immune system. The organization has 37673 authors who have published 71163 publications receiving 2497880 citations. The organization is also known as: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz & Universität Mainz.

Complex interactions between phytochemicals. The multi-target therapeutic concept of phytotherapy.

Abstract: Drugs derived from natural resources represent a significant segment of the pharmaceutical market as compared to randomly synthesized compounds. It is a goal of drug development programs to design selective ligands that act on single disease targets to obtain highly effective and safe drugs with low side effects. Although this strategy was successful for many new therapies, there is a marked decline in the number of new drugs introduced into clinical practice over the past decades. One reason for this failure may be due to the fact that the pathogenesis of many diseases is rather multi-factorial in nature and not due to a single cause. Phytotherapy, whose therapeutic efficacy is based on the combined action of a mixture of constituents, offers new treatment opportunities. Because of their biological defence function, plant secondary metabolites act by targeting and disrupting the cell membrane, by binding and inhibiting specific proteins or they adhere to or intercalate into RNA or DNA. Phytotherapeutics may exhibit pharmacological effects by the synergistic or antagonistic interaction of many phytochemicals. Mechanistic reasons for interactions are bioavailability, interference with cellular transport processes, activation of pro-drugs or deactivation of active compounds to inactive metabolites, action of synergistic partners at different points of the same signalling cascade (multi-target effects) or inhibition of binding to target proteins. "-Omics" technologies and systems biology may facilitate unravelling synergistic effects of herbal mixtures.

The effect of treatment with omalizumab, an anti-IgE antibody, on asthma exacerbations and emergency medical visits in patients with severe persistent asthma

Abstract: Background: Patients with severe persistent asthma who are inadequately controlled despite treatment according to current asthma management guidelines have a significant unmet medical need. Such patients are at high risk of serious exacerbations and asthma-related mortality. Methods: Here, we pooled data from seven studies to determine the effect of omalizumab, an anti-immunoglobulin E (IgE) monoclonal antibody, on asthma exacerbations in patients with severe persistent asthma. Omalizumab was added to current asthma therapy and compared with placebo (in five double-blind studies) or with current asthma therapy alone (in two open-label studies). The studies included 4308 patients (2511 treated with omalizumab), 93% of whom had severe persistent asthma according to the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) 2002 classification. Using the Poisson regression model, results were calculated as the ratio of treatment effect (omalizumab : control) on the standardized exacerbation rate per year. Results: Omalizumab significantly reduced the rate of asthma exacerbations by 38% (P < 0.0001 vs control) and the rate of total emergency visits by 47% (P < 0.0001 vs control). Analysis of demographic subgroups showed that the efficacy of omalizumab on asthma exacerbations was unaffected by patient age, gender, baseline serum IgE (split by median) or by 2- or 4-weekly dosing schedule, although benefit in absolute terms appeared to be greatest in patients with more severe asthma, defined by a lower value of percentage predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) at baseline. Conclusions: These results suggest that omalizumab may fulfil an important need in patients with severe persistent asthma, many of whom are not adequately controlled on current therapy.

Drift time-specific collision energies enable deep-coverage data-independent acquisition proteomics

Abstract: A data-independent acquisition (DIA) mass spectrometry approach, ultradefinition (UD)MSE, offers high reproducibility and improved proteome coverage over alternative DIA and data-dependent acquisition workflows. We present a data-independent acquisition mass spectrometry method, ultradefinition (UD) MSE. This approach utilizes ion mobility drift time-specific collision-energy profiles to enhance precursor fragmentation efficiency over current MSE and high-definition (HD) MSE data-independent acquisition techniques. UDMSE provided high reproducibility and substantially improved proteome coverage of the HeLa cell proteome compared to previous implementations of MSE, and it also outperformed a state-of-the-art data-dependent acquisition workflow. Additionally, we report a software tool, ISOQuant, for processing label-free quantitative UDMSE data.