Synthesis, characterization, and evaluation of cytotoxicity, antioxidant, antifungal, antibacterial, and cutaneous wound healing effects of copper nanoparticles using the aqueous extract of Strawberry fruit and L-Ascorbic acid

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd Fragaria ananassa, also known as “Strawberry” is a common species in Iran and widely used for its anti-inflammatory, anti-ulcer, astringent, anti-allergic, antibacterial, antifungal, and antidiarrheal activities and also in the treatment of skin wounds. The purpose of the study was chemical characterization and assessment of cytotoxicity, antioxidant, antifungal, antibacterial, and cutaneous wound healing properties of copper nanoparticles (CuNPs) using the aqueous extract of Strawberry fruit and L-Ascorbic acid as reducing and stabilizing agents. These nanoparticles were characterized by FT-IR, UV–visible spectroscopy, EDS, FE-SEM, and TEM analysis. TEM images exhibited a uniform spherical morphology and diameters of 10–30 nm for the biosynthesized nanoparticles. DPPH free radical scavenging test revealed similar antioxidant properties for Strawberry, CuNPs, and butylated hydroxytoluene. The Strawberry and synthesized CuNPs had great cell viability dose-dependently against HUVEC cell line. In the microbiological part of this study, CuNPs showed higher antibacterial and antifungal properties than all standard antibiotics (p ≤ 0.01). Also, CuNPs prevented the growth of all bacteria at 2–8 mg/mL concentrations and destroyed them at 2–16 mg/mL concentrations (p ≤ 0.01). In the case of antifungal property of CuNPs, they inhibited the growth of all fungi at 2–4 mg/mL concentrations and destroyed them at 2–8 mg/mL concentrations (p ≤ 0.01). In vivo design, the use of CuNPs ointment in the treatment groups substantially remarkably raised (p ≤ 0.01) the wound contracture, hydroxyl proline, hexosamine, hexuronic acid, fibrocyte, and fibrocytes/fibroblast rate and reduced (p ≤ 0.01) the wound area, total cells, neutrophil, macrophage, and lymphocyte compared to Strawberry, CuSO4, tetracycline, Eucerin basal, and untreated control groups. In conclusion, the results of chemical characterization confirm that the Strawberry fruit can be consumed to produce copper nanoparticles with a remarkable amount of remedial effects without any cytotoxicity against HUVECs

In situ decoration of Au NPs over polydopamine encapsulated GO/Fe3O4 nanoparticles as a recyclable nanocatalyst for the reduction of nitroarenes

Abstract A new and efficient catalyst has been designed and prepared via in situ immobilization of Au NPs fabricated polydopamine (PDA)-shelled Fe3O4 nanoparticle anchored over graphene oxide (GO) (GO/Fe3O4@PDA/Au). This novel, architecturally interesting magnetic nanocomposite was fully characterized using different analytical techniques such as Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy, Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy, elemental mapping, Transmission Electron Microscopy, Fourier Transformed Infrared Spectroscopy, X-ray Diffraction and Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Electron Spectroscopy. Catalytic activity of this material was successfully explored in the reduction of nitroarenes to their corresponding substituted anilines, using NaBH4 as reducing agent at ambient conditions. The most significant merits for this protocol were smooth and clean catalysis at room temperature with excellent productivity, sustainable conditions, ease of separation of catalyst from the reaction mixture by using a magnetic bar and most importantly reusability of the catalyst at least 8 times without any pre-activation, minimum loss of activity and considerable leaching

Expression, Purification and Characterization of Functional Teduglutide Using GST Fusion System in Prokaryotic Cells

Purpose: Teduglutide is the first and only FDA-approved drug for long-term treatment of short bowel syndrome (SBS). The current study aimed to present an approach for production of teduglutide using recombinant DNA technology. Methods: The coding gene for teduglutide was cloned into pGEX-2T vector, where coding sequence for factor Xa cleavage site was added between GST and teduglutide coding genes. The GST-teduglutide protein was overexpressed in E. coli BL21 (DE3) strain and affinity purified using glutathione sepharose affinity column. Results: On-column proteolytic activity of factor Xa followed by size exclusion chromatography resulted in the pure teduglutide. Circular dichroism (CD) spectropolarimetry showed that the produced teduglutide folds into mainly α-helical structure (>50%), as expected. In mass spectroscopy analysis, the fragments of teduglutide resulted by cyanogen bromide cleavage as well as those expected theoretically due to mass fragmentation were identified. The functionality of the produced peptide was evaluated by measuring its proliferative effect on Caco2 intestinal epithelial cells, and the results indicated that produced teduglutide induces cell proliferation by 19±0.30 and 33±7.82 % at 1.21 and 3.64 µM concentrations, respectively, compared to untreated cells. Conclusion: Teduglutide was successfully expressed and purified and its functionality and structural integrity were confirmed by in vitro experiments. We believe that the experimental-scale method presented in the current study can be useful for pilot-scale and also industrial-scale production of teduglutide