Progress in Medicinal Chemistry

Six topics of interest to medicinal chemists, microbiologists, pharmacologists and clinicains are reviewed in this volume. Chapter 1 updates our knowledge of a promising class of antitumor drugs, the heterocyclic aldehyde thiosemicarbazones. In the last few years, much progress has been made in the treatment of hypertension by inhibiting components of the renin angiotensin system; this is reviewed in chapter 2. Another approach to the treatment of cardiovascular disease, using 4-quinolones as vasodilators, is discussed in chapter 3. Although good progress has been made to counteract bacterial resistance to B-lactam antibiotics, this problem is of increasing importance in the efficacy of most other antibiotics, as is demonstrated in chapter 4. The search for drugs to treat the ever increasing number of people infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) continues unabated. Research into the inhibition of HIV proteinase (chapter 5) gives rise to optimism that such agents may play an important role in the treatment of AIDS.
This volume ends with an account (chapter 6) of a promising but as yet not finalized therapy for tumors which are refractory to other drugs, namely, the use of compounds derived from taxol which react with tubulin rather than DNA.