"Antedrugs," a safer approach to therapy

Corticosteroids are used to treat inflammatory conditions such as asthma and other chronic diseases which has made them among the most widely  prescribed drugs. Though the anti-inflammatories offer swift relief to  the patient, they can carry with them serious side effects. For  example, the inflammatory steroids used to treat asthma can stunt a  child's growth over time. Similarly, adult treatment of Addison's  disease can lead to the development of diabetes and hypertension.

For more than 20 years, a research team has been working to develop a  safer approach that would eliminate inflammation without causing damage  to the body. Such drugs, called "antedrugs" have been developed in a lab  at Florida A&M's College of Pharmacy, USA, headed by Henry Lee. Dr Lee  and his team have recently completed a new study entitled,  Anti-Inflammatory Activities of New Steroidal Antedrugs Isoxazoline  Derivatives.

Antedrug design is a new approach to create safer drugs that attack a  problem such as inflammation then quickly become inactive before they  can cause damage. The primary objective of the study was to synthesize  a new group of corticosteroids that have anti-asthmatic and  anti-inflammatory properties without adverse side effects. The  researchers synthesized new antedrugs, isoxazoline derivatives, from  prednisolone. They tested these in vitro, finding that antedrugs  effectively reduced inflammation, and that isoxazoline derivatives were  five times more potent than prednisolone in binding affinities to the  cell corticosteroids receptors and in reducing inflammation.