Marwa O Mikati

In () and (), the methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway is responsible for isoprene synthesis. This pathway and its products are vital to bacterial/parasitic metabolism and survival, and represent an attractive...

Enkephalins are opioid peptides that modulate analgesia, reward, and stress. detection of enkephalins remains difficult due to transient and low endogenous concentrations and inherent sequence similarity. To begin to address...

Opioid use alters peripheral immune functions via unknown mechanisms. In a recent issue of Cell, Zhu et al. report increased fragile-like regulatory T cells in patients with opioid use disorder...

Rationale: In utero opioid exposure is associated with lower weight and a neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS) at birth, along with longer-term adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes and mood disorders. While NOWS...

The endogenous opioid peptide system, comprised of enkephalins, endorphins, dynorphins, and nociceptin, is a highly complex neurobiological system. Opioid peptides are derived from four precursor molecules and undergo several processing...

Nationwide, opioid misuse among pregnant women has risen four-fold from 1999 to 2014, with commensurate increase in neonates hospitalized for neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). NAS occurs when a fetus exposed...

With the rising prevalence of multidrug resistance, there is an urgent need to develop novel antibiotics. Many putative antibiotics demonstrate promising potency but fail due to poor drug-like qualities (e.g.,...

Coagulase-positive staphylococci, which frequently colonize the mucosal surfaces of animals, also cause a spectrum of opportunistic infections including skin and soft tissue infections, urinary tract infections, pneumonia, and bacteremia. However,...