Nanobiosensors-their Applications in the Medicinal Plants Industry

For centuries, herbal drugs have been the only accessible resource for treatment of pain and passions. Today, despite remarkable progress and development of synthetic drugs, medicinal plants and their derived drugs are used massively. So that, in some countries medicinal plants is inseparable from drugs and treatment systems. More ever, their marketing and economical aspects are more flourishing than other chemical drugs. Monitoring of medicinal plant products is necessary in drug industry. There is increasing demand for development of analytical equipments for the production process, from crude materials to final products. In this case, biosensors can be excellent analytical tools in order to analysis of medicinal plants and their products. This review is going to explain nano-biosensor technology briefly and so their potential application in medicinal plant industry. Some of these applications are monitoring of environment and fast identification of pathogens, determination of toxicities, measurement of different types of secondary metabolites, herbal pharmacology and others

Specific delivering of RNAi using Spike's aptamer-functionalized lipid nanoparticles for targeting SARS-CoV-2: A strong anti-Covid drug in a clinical case study

Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) as a global pandemic has attracted the attention of many scientific centers to find the right treatment. We expressed and purified the recombinant receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein, and specific RBD aptamers were designed using SELEX method. RNAi targeting nucleocapsid phosphoprotein was synthesized and human lung cells were inoculated with aptamer-functionalized lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) containing RNAi. The results demonstrated that RBD aptamer having KD values of 0.290 nm possessed good affinity. Based on molecular docking and efficacy prediction analysis, siRNA molecule was showed the best action. LNPs were appropriately functionalized by aptamer and contained RNAi molecules. Antiviral assay using q-PCR and ELISA demonstrated that LNP functionalized with 35 µm Apt and containing 30 nm RNAi/ml of cell culture had the best antiviral activity compared to other concentrations. Applied aptamer in the nanocarrier has two important functions. First, it can deliver the drug (RNAi) to the surface of epithelial cells. Second, by binding to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, it inhibits the virus entrance into cells. Our data reveal an interaction between the aptamer and the virus, and RNAi targeted the virus RNA. CT scan and the clinical laboratory tests in a clinical case study, a 36-year old man who presented with severe SARS-CoV-2, demonstrated that inhalation of 10 mg Apt-LNPs-RNAi nebulized/day for six days resulted in an improvement in consolidation and ground-glass opacity in lungs on the sixth day of treatment. Our findings suggest the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection through inhalation of Aptamer-LNPs-RNAi