Cancer is considered as one of the most severe health problems and is currently the third most common cause of death in the world after heart and infectious diseases. Novel therapies are constantly being discovered, developed and trialed. Many of the current anticancer agents exhibit non-ideal pharmaceutical and pharmacological properties and are distributed non-specifically throughout the body. This results in death of the both normal healthy and malignant cells and substantially leads to accruing a variety of serious toxic side effects. Therefore, the efficient systemic therapy of cancer is almost impossible due to harmful side effects of anticancer agents to the healthy organs and tissues. Furthermore, several problems such as low bioavailability of the drugs, low drug concentrations at the site of action, lack of drug specificity and drug-resistance also cause many restrictions on clinical applications of these drugs in the tumor therapy. Different types of the liposomal formulations have been used in medicine due to their distinctive advantages associated with their structural flexibility in the encapsulation of various agents with different physicochemical properties. They can also mediate delivery of the cargo to the appropriate cell type and subcellular compartment, reducing the effective dosage and possible side effects which are related to high systemic concentrations. Therefore, these novel systems were found very promising and encouraging dosage forms for the treatment of different types of cancer by increasing efficiency and reducing the systemic toxicity due to the specific drug delivery and targeting.

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The leaves of seventeen cultivars of olive growing in the north of Iran were investigated for total phenol content and antioxidant activity. The identification and quantification of main phenolic compounds were performed by reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography with diode array detector. The cultivars Kalamon, Gordal, and Coratina contained the highest concentration of phenolic compounds (190.65 ± 0.03, 184.72 ± 0.001, and 155.91 ± 0.06 mg GAE/g extract, respectively). The maximum radical scavenging activities were found in Gordal, Coratina, and Kalamon extracts (IC 50 20.66, 22.95, and 26.74 lg ml -1 , respectively). The extracts of Mishen, Fishomi, and Arbequina (1971.37 ± 0.007, 1794.57 ± 0.001, and 1760.57 ± 0.005 lmol Fe II/g dried extract, respectively) showed highest antioxidant activity in FRAP assay. The identification analysis demonstrated the present of vanillin, rutin, luteolin 7-O-glucoside, oleuropein, and quercetin.The highest oleuropein concentrations were detected in cultivars Mishen, Beleidi, Kalamon, and Roghani while it was not detected in cultivars Conservolea, Amigdalolia, Leccino, and Fishomi.

Farnesyltranseferase inhibitors (FTIs) are one of the most promising classes of anticancer agents, but though some compounds in this category are in clinical trials there are no marketed drugs in this class yet. Quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) models can be used for predicting the activity of FTI candidates in early stages of drug discovery. In this study 192 imidazole-containing FTIs were obtained from the literature, structures of the molecules were optimized using Hyperchem software, and molecular descriptors were calculated using Dragon software. The most suitable descriptors were selected using genetic algorithms-partial least squares (GA-PLS) and stepwise regression, and indicated that the volume, shape and polarity of the FTIs are important for their activities. 2D-QSAR models were prepared using both linear methods, i.e., multiple linear regression (MLR), and non-linear methods, i.e., artificial neural networks (ANN) and support vector machines (SVM). The proposed QSAR models were validated using internal and external validation methods. The results show that the proposed 2D-QSAR models are valid and that they can be applied to predict the activities of imidazole-containing FTIs. The prediction capability of the 2D-QSAR (linear and non-linear) models is comparable to and somewhat better than that of previous 3D-QSAR models and the non-linear models are more accurate than the linear models.

It is concluded that oral administration of pioglitazone attenuates morphine-induced tolerance. This effect of pioglitazone may be, at least in part, due to its anti-inflammatory property which suppressed the cortical pro-inflammatory cytokine and inhibited of nuclear factor-kappa B activity.