Editorial [Hot Topic: Bioactive Peptides for Immune Disease Therapy (Guest Editor: John M. Matsoukas)]

This volume is a selection of up today review articles on the thematic area: “Bioactive Peptides for Immune Disease Therapy”. In particular, book contains nine articles selected from several hot topics on Drug Design presented at the International Medicinal Chemistry Conference entitled: “Medicinal Chemistry: Drug Discovery and Design” held in Patras, March 11-13, 2004. Research and review papers describe current status and perspectives for immune system-mediated diseases in which important peptides such as Myelin Basic Epitope Peptides, Sequential Oligopeptide Carriers, Mucines, Corticotropin-Release Hormone Neuropeptides, HIV Peptides, Cytokines, play a key role in the regulation of immune system and provide important information for drug design and therapy.

Articles are written by leading scientists in this field who have put in an intense effort to provide the current perspective and a comprehensive overview of the state of knowledge about methods and strategies in the immunotherapy of diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, AIDS and other autoimmune diseases. Peptide research on drug discovery and design is an important field in the development of novel constrained peptide analogues or “peptide mimetics”, with the potential to generate important new drugs for disease therapy . Peptides control numerous body processes, and, as such, represent an untapped wellspring of new drugs for treating a variety of diseases. Knowledge of peptide action is important in rational drug design. Articles intend to assist the reader to get a global understanding of the recent research activities in the field of Drug Discovery and Design for immune disease therapy.

I would like to thank and express my deepest appreciation to all contributors in this book. In particular, to the authors for generously contributing their time and expertise in the preparation of this issue. I appreciate the invitation by Current Medicinal Chemistry in providing the suitable and high-standard forum through which important findings of this research will become available to the scientific community as well as the assistance of Dr. Spyros Deraos for editing this issue In this regard I greatly appreciate the honor given to me by the Editor-In-Chief in entrusting me as a Guest Editor of this special issue. Finally, I am thankful and amply rewarded for extending my knowledge on the immune peptides field during the process of reading and editing the articles.