Girijasankar Guntuku

An indigenous bacterial strain, designated Nocardiopsis dassonvillei B2, was isolated and identified as a producer of glycolipid biosurfactants, specifically di‐rhamnolipids. The present study focuses on purification, characterization, and biological evaluation of the di‐rhamnolipid biosurfactant. A purified di‐rhamnolipid fraction was obtained using silica gel column chromatography, and its molecular structure was characterized using a combination of infrared (IR) spectroscopy, two‐dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (2D NMR), and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI‐MS). The data confirmed that the compound was di‐rhamnolipid, containing two rhamnose sugar molecules attached with fatty acid chain and with mass value 649.93. The NRU assay demonstrated a dose‐dependent decline in cancer cell viability, with IC ₅₀ values of 97.16 ± 0.2 µg/mL for MCF‐7, 217.3 ± 0.5 µg/mL for HCT‐116, and 284.7 ± 0.2 µg/mL for HaCaT cells. The underlying mechanism of action is hypothesized to involve the induction of apoptosis. The di‐rhamnolipid exhibited notable antibacterial activity, with a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 5 µg/mL against both Gram‐positive and Gram‐negative bacteria, as determined by the agar diffusion method. Furthermore, its strong antibiofilm activity was confirmed against biofilm‐forming pathogens, effectively. These findings establish di‐rhamnolipid as a promising candidate for biomedical applications, including cancer therapy, antimicrobial treatment, and biofilm inhibition, underscoring its potential as a multifunctional therapeutic agent. Practical applications : Nocardiopsis dessonvillei var. B2 produces a di‐rhamnolipid biosurfactant with excellent surfactant and biological activities, similar to other biosurfactant producing strains like Pseudomona s species. Compared to other bacteria, this strain belongs to the class of actinobacteria and is non‐pathogenic to humans, making it very safe for biosurfactant production. The biosurfactant was produced using olive oil as carbon source, as the strain efficiently utilized the oil and generate biosurfactant, which can be useful for the bioremediation of oil contaminated soils, water bodies and other industrial wastes. Further the produced biosurfactant shows potential anticancer, antibiofilm, and antibacterial activities.

Nanobodies, derived from camelids and sharks, offer compact, single‐variable heavy‐chain antibodies with diverse biomedical potential. This review explores their generation methods, including display techniques on phages, yeast, or bacteria, and computational methodologies. Integrating experimental and computational approaches enhances understanding of nanobody structure and function. Future trends involve leveraging next‐generation sequencing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence for efficient candidate selection and predictive modeling. The convergence of traditional and computational methods promises revolutionary advancements in precision biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery and diagnostics. Embracing these technologies accelerates nanobody development, driving transformative breakthroughs in biomedicine and paving the way for precision medicine and biomedical innovation.

Agri-food waste arising at any point in the food distribution chain during harvesting and processing of agri-material to derive value-added products. Such wastes decompose readily, generate odors, and sometimes act as a potential source to cause infections. Conventional disposal methods of food waste ultimately results in many problems such as environmental pollution, due to liberation of toxic chemical compounds like dioxin and furans. Extracted grains, cereal residues, vegetable waste, and fruit seed, skin, rind, pomace are the principle agricultural waste and contains good sources of valuable bioactive compounds, such as carotenoids, polyphenols, dietary fibers, vitamins, enzymes, proteins, sugars, minerals, and oils, etc. Because of their high nutritional composition, these residues are not depicted as “wastes” but considered as raw materials for fermentative production of other commercial products. The agricultural raw materials are very convenient to handle and inexpensive. Because of availability of rich nutrients, provides appropriate conditions for the growth of microorganisms. These microorganisms can reuse the raw materials with the help of fermentation processes for the production of various enzymes. This chapter summarizes the past, present scenarios of agri-food waste and agri-waste utilization in the fermentative production of proteases. Proteases are a group of enzymes that are in high demand due to their wide and divergent biotechnological applications. The different classes of proteases, the recent development of agri-food waste valorization strategies for the microbial production and purification of proteases. Finally, the commercial application and the future scope of proteases are covered in this chapter.

Gastric cancer is the world’s second leading cause of cancer-related fatalities, with the epidemiology changing over the previous several decades. FOXOs are the O subfamily of the forkhead box (FOX) transcription factor family, which consists of four members: FOXO1, FOXO3, FOXO4, and FOXO6. FOXO6 mRNA and protein levels are increased in gastric cancer tissues. FOXO6 forced overexpression enhances gastric cancer cell growth, while knockdown decreases proliferation. In our study, the GEPIA, Kaplan-Meier, KEGG, and STRING databases were used to determine FOXO6 mRNA expression, overall survival ratio, interactive pathways, and top 10 associated proteins in gastric cancer respectively. Due to the lack of a solved structure for FOXO6, homology modeling was performed to obtain a 3D structure model, and we used anti-cancer drugs and small molecules to target FOXO6 for identifying a potential selective FOXO6 inhibitor. The chemical composition of the proteins and ligands has a significant impact on docking procedure performance. With this in mind, a critical evaluation of the performance of three regularly used docking routines was carried out: MVD, AutoDock Vina in PyRx, and ArgusLab. The binding affinities, docking scores, and intermolecular interactions were used as assessment criteria. In the study, the porfimer sodium showed excellent binding affinity to the FOXO6 protein. The major three docking software packages were used to analyze the scoring/H-bonding energy and intermolecular interactions. Based on the results, we concluded that FOXO6 was upregulated in gastric cancer and the ligand porfimer sodium emerges as a promising potential FOXO6 inhibitor to curtail gastric cancer progression.

The recent emergence of COVID-19 influenced the layman’s knowledge of drugs. Although several drugs have been discovered serendipitously, research has moved to the next-generation era of drug disco... Lay abstract Despite existing therapies for various ailments, emerging diseases or disorders need more selective treatments. Traditionally ‘pharmacy’ is thought of as a medical store, but time has ... Tweetable abstract How pharmacy’s core research domains provide strong support for both basic and translational drug discovery research.

There is increasing scientific evidence and commercial interest for using probiotics for eliminating and handling of specific diseases. Probiotics can be evaluated for its role and performance against isolated pathogens from contaminating sources. The present work reports on invitro antimicrobial activity of commercial selected probiotics against pathogenic microbe Vibrio parahaemolyticus. The work also describes cytotoxic activities using MTT assay and adherence studies of selected probiotics. Results for the studies showed maximum zone of inhibition 13.66±0.46mm in probiotic enteroplus,12.33±0.93mm in lactobacillus (NCIM2056) and 10.66±0.93mm in Avant Bact. Cytotoxicity was expressed as IC50(µg/ml) values, observed on CaCO cell lines for different probiotics. Avant Bact showed a IC50 value of 104.7745, Lactobacillus (NCIM2056) a value of 58.13223 and Enteroplus a value of 50.09716. These values expressed different safety aspects of probiotics used for study. Finally the adherence study was done to check probiotic colonizing capacity. The probiotics showed varied adherence capacity against caco cell lines. Enteroplus has % adhesion of 10.25±0.74, Avant Bact. 7.25±0.82 and Lactobacillus (NCIM2056) 7.5±1.12. In conclusion antimicrobial results show importance of probiotics to be used against specific gastro intestinal diseases. Cytotoxicity determines safety aspects of probiotics and adherence study determines probiotic as a promising candidate for in vivo studies.