Transethosomes and Nanoethosomes: Recent Approach on Transdermal Drug Delivery System

In the past few decades, an emerging drug delivery system that came into light is transdermal drug delivery system. It has become the talk of the town in the field of drug delivery because of its better and easy accessibility. Though it is one of the attractive routes, transport of drug through the skin has remained a challenge. To overcome the challenge, vesicular system has been adopted so as to have better skin permeation of bioactive agents. Vesicular system like liposome has shown inefficiency to cross the layers of skin. Then transethosomes and nanoethosomes are employed for delivering drug into the deeper layer of skin. Nanoethosomes and transethosomes have same composition that is water, ethanol and phospholipid. Transethosome contains edge activator additionally. Due to the presence of ethanol and edge activator, it displayed enhanced skin permeation. Vesicular system gives a better patient compliance, being a non-invasive method of drug administration. In this chapter, we attempted to provide brief information about methods of preparation, characterization and pharmaceutical uses of nanoethosomes and transethosomes

Valorization potential of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) seed : nutraceutical quality, food properties, safety aspects, and application as a health-promoting ingredient in foods

The tomato is a member of the Solanaceae family and is a crop that is widely cultivated around the world due to its sweet, sour, salty, juicy, and nutritious berries. The processing of tomatoes generates a significant amount of waste in the form of tomato pomace, which includes seeds and skin. Tomato seeds are reservoirs of various nutrients, such as proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, minerals, and vitamins. These components make tomato seeds an important ingredient for application in food matrices. This review discusses the functional food properties of tomato seeds and their scope of utilization as major ingredients in the functional food industry. In addition, this review describes the development of tomato seeds as a potential nutritional and nutraceutical ingredient, along with recent updates on research conducted worldwide. This is the first review that demonstrates the nutritional profile of tomato seeds along with its diverse functional food properties and application as a functional food ingredient

Drug Susceptibility in Leishmania Isolates Following Miltefosine Treatment in Cases of Visceral Leishmaniasis and Post Kala-Azar Dermal Leishmaniasis

Resistance to antimonials has emerged as a major hurdle to the treatment and control of VL and led to the introduction of Miltefosine as first line treatment in the Indian subcontinent. MIL is an oral drug with a long half-life, and it is feared that resistance may emerge rapidly, threatening control efforts under the VL elimination program. There is an urgent need for monitoring treatment efficacy and emergence of drug resistance in the field. In a set of VL/PKDL cases recruited for MIL treatment, we observed comparable drug susceptibility in pre- and post-treatment isolates from cured VL patients while MIL susceptibility was significantly reduced in isolates from VL relapse and PKDL cases. The PKDL isolates showed higher tolerance to MIL as compared to VL isolates. Both VL and PKDL isolates were uniformly susceptible to PMM. MIL transporter genes LdMT/LdRos3 were previously reported as potential resistance markers in strains in which MIL resistance was experimentally induced. The point mutations and the down-regulated expression of these transporters observed in vitro could, however, not be verified in natural populations of parasites. LdMT/LdRos3 genes therefore, do not appear to be suitable markers so far for monitoring drug susceptibility in clinical leishmanial isolates

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

Peer reviewe

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Search for gravitational-lensing signatures in the full third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo network

Gravitational lensing by massive objects along the line of sight to the source causes distortions of gravitational wave-signals; such distortions may reveal information about fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. In this work, we have extended the search for lensing signatures to all binary black hole events from the third observing run of the LIGO--Virgo network. We search for repeated signals from strong lensing by 1) performing targeted searches for subthreshold signals, 2) calculating the degree of overlap amongst the intrinsic parameters and sky location of pairs of signals, 3) comparing the similarities of the spectrograms amongst pairs of signals, and 4) performing dual-signal Bayesian analysis that takes into account selection effects and astrophysical knowledge. We also search for distortions to the gravitational waveform caused by 1) frequency-independent phase shifts in strongly lensed images, and 2) frequency-dependent modulation of the amplitude and phase due to point masses. None of these searches yields significant evidence for lensing. Finally, we use the non-detection of gravitational-wave lensing to constrain the lensing rate based on the latest merger-rate estimates and the fraction of dark matter composed of compact objects

Synthesis of mercaptopropionic acid stabilized CDS quantum dots for bioimaging in breast cancer

Semiconductor inorganic nanocrystals or quantum dots (QDs) are nowadays extensively used for imaging and analysis of biomolecules owing to their superior optical properties over conventional organic fluorophores. They have excellent potential for synthesizing molecular probes against various biological markers such as free antigens, cell surface markers/antigens, bacteria, viruses and tissues. Traditional synthesis protocols of the QDs generally lead to the formation of hydrophobic nanocrystals. For biological applications, post-synthesis modifications need to be introduced to render required hydrophilicity. However, such additional steps make the tiny QDs structures bulky, which is unwanted in subsequent in-vivo executions. The present work reports a simple method for the direct synthesis of hydrophilic carboxyl (–COOH) functionalized CdS QDs using mercaptopropionic acid as a sulfur source and stabilizer. This aqueous synthesis route avoids the requirement of extra surface modification steps. The size and surface morphology of the synthesized CdS QDs were studied by electron microscopy. The average diameter of the QDs has been found to be in the range of 2-3.5nm. Spectral studies confirmed the grafting of –COOH terminal on the synthesized nanocrystals. Band gap energy and the theoretical size of the particles were calculated and found in good agreement with the experimental analysis. Due to the size quantization effect, the estimated band gap energy (2.6eV) of the QDs was on a higher side than that reported (2.4eV) for the bulk material. The synthesized nanocrystals can be further conjugated with bio-molecules for high-throughput drug screening, clinical immunological assays and protein-protein interaction studies

Emerging role of microRNA 628-5p as a novel biomarker for cancer and other diseases

MicroRNAs are a family of small, single-stranded RNAs that have key roles in regulating multiple signaling pathways within a cell. Studies have implicated aberrant expression of microRNAs in the development and progression of several pathologies including cancer. MicroRNAs are relatively stable and readily available in body fluids and tissues, making them desirable biomarkers for prognostic and diagnostic purposes in an array of diseases. MicroRNA 628 (5p/3p variants) is located in the 15q21.3 cancer-related region, and evidence suggests its association with various pathologies. The -5p mature variant, microRNA 628-5p, has been reported to be differentially expressed in various cancers, and its expression has been mostly associated with tumor suppression but there are few reports identifying its role in cancer progression. Several studies have also suggested its utility in diagnosis and prognosis of various cancers. Dysregulation of microRNA 628-5p has also been implicated in embryonal implantation defects, autism, immune modulation, myogenesis, cardiovascular disease, viral infection, and skeletal muscle repair. Here, we have provided a comprehensive review on available literature explaining the role of microRNA 628-5p as a potential cancer biomarker as well as briefly describe its function in other diseases and normal physiological conditions.</jats:p