Inhibition of extracellular matrix-degrading endopeptidases: problems, comments, and hypotheses.

A critical analysis of research on inhibitors of extracellular matrix-degrading endopeptidases reveals that a great number of substances could potentially be used for therapeutic purposes. There are, however, many obstacles that hinder this objective. If the problems are due to the characteristics of the inhibitors, they can possibly be circumvented by chemical methods, but if they are innate properties of the pathological environment and of the mode of action of the enzymes, the problem may not have an immediate solution.