Magnolol: A neolignan from the Magnolia family for the prevention and treatment of cancer

© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The past few decades have witnessed widespread research to challenge carcinogenesis; however, it remains one of the most important health concerns with the worst prognosis and diagnosis. Increasing lines of evidence clearly show that the rate of cancer incidence will increase in future and will create global havoc, designating it as an epidemic. Conventional chemotherapeutics and treatment with synthetic disciplines are often associated with adverse side effects and development of chemoresistance. Thus, discovering novel economic and patient friendly drugs that are safe and efficacious is warranted. Several natural compounds have proved their potential against this dreadful disease so far. Magnolol is a hydroxylated biphenyl isolated from the root and stem bark of Magnolia tree. Magnolol can efficiently prevent or inhibit the growth of various cancers originating from different organs such as brain, breast, cervical, colon, liver, lung, prostate, skin, etc. Considering these perspectives, the current review primarily focuses on the fascinating role of magnolol against various types of cancers, and the source and chemistry of magnolol and the molecular mechanism underlying the targets of magnolol are discussed. This review proposes magnolol as a suitable candidate that can be appropriately designed and established into a potent anti-cancer drug

Social Safety Nets for Food and Nutritional Security in India

This paper brings together existing literature on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNRGEA) and the Public Distribution System (PDS) in India, offering a narrative review of the evidence on impacts on food security, health and nutrition of beneficiaries. Both programs operate on a large scale and have the capacity to impact the factors leading to undernutrition. It is evident that despite the deficiencies in implementation, both the MGNREGA and the PDS are inclusive and reach the poor and the marginalized who are likely to also experience greater undernutrition and poor health. Data challenges have however prevented researchers from conducting studies that assess the ultimate impact of these two large-scale programs on health and nutrition. The evidence that exists suggests largely positive impacts indicating a clear potential to make these programs more nutrition sensitive not just by incorporating elements that would explicitly address nutritional concerns but also by directing specific attention to innovations that strengthen critical complementarities and synergies that exist between the two programs

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Not AvailableCrimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is an emerging zoonotic disease in India and requires immediate detection of infection both for preventing further transmission and for controlling the infection. The present study describes development, optimization, and evaluation of a novel molecular beacon-based real-time RT-PCR assay for rapid, sensitive, and specific diagnosis of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV). The developed assay was found to be a better alternative to the reported TaqMan assay for routine diagnosis of CCHF.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableThe highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus, currently circulating in Asia, causes severe disease in domestic poultry as well as wild birds like crow. However, the molecular pathogenesis of HPAIV infection in crows and other wild birds is not well known. Thus, as a step to explore it, a comprehensive global gene expression analysis was performed on crow lungs, infected with HPAI H5N1 crow isolate (A/Crow/India/11TI11/2011) using high throughput next generation sequencing (NGS) (GS FLX Titanium XLR70). The reference genome of crow is not available, so RNA seq analysis was performed on the basis of a de novo assembled transcriptome. The RNA seq result shows, 4052 genes were expressed uniquely in noninfected, 6277 genes were expressed uniquely in HPAIV infected sample and of the 6814 genes expressed in both samples, 2279 genes were significantly differentially expressed. Our transcriptome profile data allows for the ability to understand the molecular mechanism behind the recent lethal HPAIV outbreak in crows which was, until recently, thought to cause lethal infections only in gallinaceous birds such as chickens, but not in wild birds. The pattern of differentially expressed genes suggest that this isolate of H5N1 virus evades the host innate immune response by attenuating interferon (IFN)-inducible signalling possibly by down regulating the signalling from type I IFN (IFNAR1 and IFNAR2) and type II IFN receptors, upregulation of the signalling inhibitors suppressor of cytokine signalling 1 (SOCS1) and SOCS3 and altering the expression of toll-like receptors (TLRs). This may be the reason for disease and mortality in crows.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableCrimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is an emerging zoonotic disease in India, first reportedfrom Gujarat, in December 2010. In the present study, CCHFV genome was detected in Hyalomma ticksinfesting cattle collected in early 2011, from Undani village, of Mehsana district of Gujarat, India underpost human CCHF outbreak surveillance activity. The full-length ‘S’ segment of CCHFV was amplifiedusing one-step RT-PCR, from total RNA isolated from these ticks. The 1673 bp amplicon was furthercloned in to pGEM®-T Easy vector and confirmed by restriction digestion. This full length ‘S’ segmentwas sequenced and sequence was submitted to NCBI GenBank database under Accession No JX051650.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableThe highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus, currently circulating in Asia, causes severe disease in domestic poultry as well as wild birds like crow. However, the molecular pathogenesis of HPAIV infection in crows and other wild birds is not well known. Thus, as a step to explore it, a comprehensive global gene expression analysis was performed on crow lungs, infected with HPAI H5N1 crow isolate (A/Crow/India/11TI11/2011) using high throughput next generation sequencing (NGS) (GS FLX Titanium XLR70). The reference genome of crow is not available, so RNA seq analysis was performed on the basis of a de novo assembled transcriptome. The RNA seq result shows, 4052 genes were expressed uniquely in noninfected, 6277 genes were expressed uniquely in HPAIV infected sample and of the 6814 genes expressed in both samples, 2279 genes were significantly differentially expressed. Our transcriptome profile data allows for the ability to understand the molecular mechanism behind the recent lethal HPAIV outbreak in crows which was, until recently, thought to cause lethal infections only in gallinaceous birds such as chickens, but not in wild birds. The pattern of differentially expressed genes suggest that this isolate of H5N1 virus evades the host innate immune response by attenuating interferon (IFN)-inducible signalling possibly by down regulating the signalling from type I IFN (IFNAR1 and IFNAR2) and type II IFN receptors, upregulation of the signalling inhibitors suppressor of cytokine signalling 1 (SOCS1) and SOCS3 and altering the expression of toll-like receptors (TLRs). This may be the reason for disease and mortality in crowsNot Availabl

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Not AvailableThe molecular pathogenesis of avian influenza infection varies greatly with individual bird species and virus strain. The molecular pathogenesis of the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV) or the low pathogenic avian influenza virus (LPAIV) infection in avian species remains poorly understood. Thus, global immune response of chickens infected with HPAI H5N1 (A/duck/India/02CA10/2011) and LPAI H9N2 (A/duck/India/249800/2010) viruses was studied using microarray to identify crucial host genetic components responsive to these infection. HPAI H5N1 virus induced excessive expression of type I IFNs (IFNA and IFNG), cytokines (IL1B, IL18, IL22, IL13, and IL12B), chemokines (CCL4, CCL19, CCL10, and CX3CL1) and IFN stimulated genes (OASL, MX1, RSAD2, IFITM5, IFIT5, GBP 1, and EIF2AK) in lung tissues. This dysregulation of host innate immune genes may be the critical determinant of the severity and the outcome of the influenza infection in chickens. In contrast, the expression levels of most of these genes was not induced in the lungs of LPAI H9N2 virus infected chickens. This study indicated the relationship between host immune genes and their roles in pathogenesis of HPAIV infection in chickens.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableThe differences in the influenza viral pathogenesis observed between different pathogenic strains are associated with distinct properties of virus strains and the host immune responses. In order to determine the differences in the duck immune response against two different pathogenic strains, we studied genome-wide host immune gene response of ducks infected with A/duck/India/02CA10/2011 and A/duck/Tripura/103597/2008 H5N1 viruses using custom-designed microarray. A/duck/India/02CA10/2011 is highly pathogenic virus (HP) to ducks, whereas A/duck/Tripura/103597/2008 is a low pathogenic (LP) virus strain. Comparative lung tissue transcriptome analysis of differentially expressed genes revealed that 686 genes were commonly expressed, 880 and 1556 genes are expressed uniquely to infection with HP and LP virus, respectively. The up-regulation of chemokines (CCL4 and CXCR4) and IFN-stimulated genes (IFITM2, STAT3, TGFB1 and TGFB3) was observed in the lung tissues of ducks infected with HP virus. The up-regulation of other immune genes (IL17, OAS, SOCS3, MHC I and MHC II) was observed in both infection conditions. The expression of important antiviral immune genes MX, IFIT5, IFITM5, ISG12, β-defensins, RSAD2, EIF2AK2, TRIM23 and SLC16A3 was observed in LP virus infection, but not in HP virus infection. Several immune-related gene ontology terms and pathways activated by both the viruses were qualitatively similar but quantitatively different. Based on these findings, the differences in the host immune response might explain a part of the difference observed in the viral pathogenesis of high and low pathogenic influenza strains in ducks.Not Availabl