Antitumor Potential and other Emerging Medicinal Properties of Natural Compounds, 2013

PREFACE.- PART I. Lectins: From biological recognition molecules to variable medicinal applications.- Lectins: Personal Comments of Nathan Sharon Taken from His Memoirs (Translation from Hebrew) .-The History of Lectinology.- Animal and Human Lectins.- Lectins of Marine Origin and their Clinical Applications.- Medicinal applications of plant lectins.- PART II Structural and functional insights into medicinal ribonucleases.- Plant nucleases from nuclease I family: their properties and antitumor potential.- Bovine Seminal Ribonuclease and its special features: when two is better than one.- PART III The perspectives for ribosome inactivating proteins: unveiling the working mechanisms and potential medicinal benefits.- The Discovery of MAP30 and Elucidation of its Medicinal Activities.- Ribosome Inactivating Proteins from Plants: Biological Properties and their Use in Experimental Therapy.- Current status & Biomedical applications of Ribosome-inactivating proteins.- PART IV The research history of protease inhibitors and their health implications.- The Health Benefits of the Bowman-Birk Inhibitor.- Peptidic inhibitors of serine proteinases of plant origin.- Anti-tumor effect of synthetic serine protease inhibitor.-  A landscape of the health benefits of different natural protease inhibitors.- PART V Plethora of health benefits from small molecules: From bench-top to clinical settings.- Autophagy upregulation as a therapeutic strategy for neurodegenerative diseases.- Rapamycin – current and future uses.- Eating, drinking, smoking and cancer prevention: a focus on acetaldehyde.- The use of edible mushroom water soluble polysaccharides in the treatment and prevention of chronic diseases: a mechanistic approach.- Essential Oil Constituents: Biodiversity and their Applicability for Cancer Therapy.- PART VI Medicinal compounds from the garden: a bird’s eye view of one mushroom, one fruit, one insect, and others.- Recent research on pharmacological activities of the medicinal fungus Cordyceps sinensis.- The bitter fruit with sweet health benefits:A comprehensive synopsis of recent research progress on medicinal properties of Momordica charantia.- Bioactive constituents of the silk worm Bombyx mori.- Proteins with anticancer and antimicobial activities from mammals, submammalian vertebrates and invertebrates.- Defense proteins with antiproliferative and antimicrobial activities from fungi and bacteria.- PART VII  Modernizing investigations of traditional Chinese medicine at the molecular level.- The role of the GP-TCM Research Association to modernization and globalization of Traditional Chinese Medicine.-  High-throughput screening in traditional Chinese medicine-based drug discovery.- PART VIII Questions and future perspectives.- Achievements, questions arising and future outlook on the path to discover new medicinal compounds. Index.