Iontophoresis: A Potential Emergence of a Transdermal Drug Delivery System

The delivery of drugs into systemic circulation via skin has generated much attention during the last decade. Transdermal therapeutic systems propound controlled release of active ingredients through the skin and into the systemic circulation in a predictive manner. Drugs administered through these systems escape first-pass metabolism and maintain a steady state scenario similar to a continuous intravenous infusion for up to several days. However, the excellent impervious nature of the skin offers the greatest challenge for successful delivery of drug molecules by utilizing the concepts of iontophoresis. The present review deals with the principles and the recent innovations in the field of iontophoretic drug delivery system together with factors affecting the system. This delivery system utilizes electric current as a driving force for permeation of ionic and non-ionic medications. The rationale behind using this technique is to reversibly alter the barrier properties of skin, which could possibly improve the penetration of drugs such as proteins, peptides and other macromolecules to increase the systemic delivery of high molecular weight compounds with controlled input kinetics and minimum inter-subject variability. Although iontophoresis seems to be an ideal candidate to overcome the limitations associated with the delivery of ionic drugs, further extrapolation of this technique is imperative for translational utility and mass human application

A Metasystem of Framework Model Organisms to Study Emergence of New Host-Microbe Adaptations

An unintended consequence of global industrialization and associated societal rearrangements is new interactions of microbes and potential hosts (especially mammals and plants), providing an opportunity for the rapid emergence of host-microbe adaptation and eventual establishment of new microbe-related diseases. We describe a new model system comprising the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and several microbes, each representing different modes of interaction, to study such “maladaptations”. The model microbes include human and agricultural pathogens and microbes that are commonly considered innocuous. The system has a large knowledge base corresponding to each component organism and is amenable to high-throughput automation assisted perturbation screens for identifying components that modulate host-pathogen interactions. This would aid in the study of emergence and progression of host-microbe maladaptations in a controlled environment

Insight into the Structural Requirement of 2-Alkyl-4-(biphenylmethoxy)quinolines as Nonpeptide Angiotensin II Receptor Antagonists: A QSAR Approach

In the current study a quantitative structure activity relationship approach using sequential multiple linear regression analysis was applied to a series of 2-alkyl- 4-(biphenylylmethoxy)quinolines as angiotensin II (Ang II) receptor antagonists by using Chem 3D and Dragon Software. The studies, carried out on 33 analogs, give statistically significant correlations of selective Ang II antagonistic activity with physical properties concerning size, symmetry, shape and distribution of molecule atoms. Among several 2D quantitative structure activity relationship models, one model gave good statistical significance (r > 0.81, Ftest = 10.47, S < 0.30, chance correlation < 0.01). 3D QSAR studies show that Hennery’s law constant, Dipole and VDWE play a significant role in Ang II antagonistic activity. These QSAR studies help us in the design and prediction of novel substituted benzimidazole Ang II receptor antagonists

Diarrhea-related hemolytic uremic syndrome: Unmasking antifactor H antibodies

The cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) preceeded by diarrhea are commonly labeled as D+ HUS. However, with severe renal failure or with delayed recovery, such cases should be evaluated for rarer associations like Factor H (FH), I and CD 46 deficiency or mutations. We report such a presentation of a young boy who initially came with diarrhea and had features of HUS with delayed renal recovery. He later turned out to have anti-FH antibody-related HUS

Synthesis and photochromic properties of symmetrical aryl ether linked bi- and tri-naphthopyrans

A range of aryl ether linked benzophenones (8) has been conveniently obtained by nucleophilic displacement of fluoride from 4-fluorobenzophenone with a dihydroxy-benzene or -naphthalene. The linked benzophenones were efficiently transformed in two steps to symmetrically linked naphthopyrans (10d–k). The photochromic response of these novel systems under steady state irradiation is characterised by a two stage fading process and their colourability is only marginally improved over the related monomeric analogues (10a–c)

Multi-ancestry GWAS analysis identifies two novel loci associated with diabetic eye disease and highlights APOL1 as a high risk locus in patients with diabetic macular edema.

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a common complication of diabetes. Approximately 20% of DR patients have diabetic macular edema (DME) characterized by fluid leakage into the retina. There is a genetic component to DR and DME risk, but few replicable loci. Because not all DR cases have DME, we focused on DME to increase power, and conducted a multi-ancestry GWAS to assess DME risk in a total of 1,502 DME patients and 5,603 non-DME controls in discovery and replication datasets. Two loci reached GWAS significance (p<5x10-8). The strongest association was rs2239785, (K150E) in APOL1. The second finding was rs10402468, which co-localized to PLVAP and ANKLE1 in vascular / endothelium tissues. We conducted multiple sensitivity analyses to establish that the associations were specific to DME status and did not reflect diabetes status or other diabetic complications. Here we report two novel loci for risk of DME which replicated in multiple clinical trial and biobank derived datasets. One of these loci, containing the gene APOL1, is a risk factor in African American DME and DKD patients, indicating that this locus plays a broader role in diabetic complications for multiple ancestries. Trial Registration: NCT00473330, NCT00473382, NCT03622580, NCT03622593, NCT04108156

Knowledge-based prediction of protein backbone conformation using a structural alphabet

Libraries of structural prototypes that abstract protein local structures are known as structural alphabets and have proven to be very useful in various aspects of protein structure analyses and predictions. One such library, Protein Blocks, is composed of 16 standard 5-residues long structural prototypes. This form of analyzing proteins involves drafting its structure as a string of Protein Blocks. Predicting the local structure of a protein in terms of protein blocks is the general objective of this work. A new approach, PB-kPRED is proposed towards this aim. It involves (i) organizing the structural knowledge in the form of a database of pentapeptide fragments extracted from all protein structures in the PDB and (ii) applying a knowledge-based algorithm that does not rely on any secondary structure predictions and/or sequence alignment profiles, to scan this database and predict most probable backbone conformations for the protein local structures. Though PB-kPRED uses the structural information from homologues in preference, if available. The predictions were evaluated rigorously on 15,544 query proteins representing a non-redundant subset of the PDB filtered at 30% sequence identity cut-off. We have shown that the kPRED method was able to achieve mean accuracies ranging from 40.8% to 66.3% depending on the availability of homologues. The impact of the different strategies for scanning the database on the prediction was evaluated and is discussed. Our results highlight the usefulness of the method in the context of proteins without any known structural homologues. A scoring function that gives a good estimate of the accuracy of prediction was further developed. This score estimates very well the accuracy of the algorithm (R-2 of 0.82). An online version of the tool is provided freely for non-commercial usage at http://www.bo-protscience.fr/kpred/