Antituberculosis Drug Repurposing: A New Hope for Tackling Multi-Challenging TB in Timely Manner

Tuberculosis still stands as the world’s leading infectious disease as 1/4th of the world’s population harbors Latent TB infection (LTBI) > 10 million develops active TB and ~ 1.5 million people die per year. Approximately 4,65,000 people fell ill with multidrug or rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis (MDR/RR-TB)/year. This deadly TB scenario demands new TB drug regimens to tackle global infection reservoir, and worldwide spread of drug resistance and DS TB. Successful entry of single new drug into market is much complicated mission owing to time, cost, efficacy, and safety issues. Therefore, drug repurposing seems one reliable hope to meet the challenges of modern TB drug discovery timely, as it starts with examining market acclaimed drugs against other diseases for their efficacies against tuberculosis avoiding several lengthy and costly steps required for new molecules. Several drugs have been identified, which show potential for TB treatment. There is need for careful consideration of various trial designs to ensure that TB phase III trials are initiated for fruitful development of new TB treatment regimens. TB drug repurposing will not only give fast track novel drugs but will also serve to identify new targets for future development in cost-effective manner

Photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutant with nanosized cadmium sulfide

Efficient removal of organic pollutants from wastewater by using photocatalysis has become a hot research in recent days due to its ecological and environmental importance. Herein, cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanostructure with different morphologies i.e. nanoflowers and nanopetals were prepared by a hydrothermal method. The Structural properties of as-synthesized nanostructures material have been studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), while UV–Visible spectroscopy have been used to study their optical properties. The photocatalytic activities of the prepared nanostructures have been evaluated by the photocatalytic degradation of organic dye i.e. rhodamine B (RhB). The highest degradation of 78% in CdS nanoflower and 63% in nanopetal for RhB was observed in 4 h. The EIS measurement showed that charge transfer resistance is lower in CdS nanoflower as compare to the nanopetal. The result showed that the CdS nanoflower was more active than nanopetal for photodegradation of RB dye due to more efficient charge transfer. Due to this excellent performance of CdS nanomaterials make it an ideal candidate for various engineering applications in near future. Keywords: Cadmium sulfide, Nanoflowers, Nanopetals, Photocatalytic degradation, Rhodamine

Soil organic carbon pools and carbon management index under different land use systems in North western Himalayas

Current study was conducted to evaluate the effect of important land uses and soil depth on soil organic carbon pools viz. total organic carbon, Walkley and black carbon, labile organic carbon, particulate organic carbon, microbial biomass carbon and carbon management index (CMI) in the north Western Himalayas, India. Soil samples from five different land uses viz. forest, pasture, apple, saffron and paddy-oilseed were collected up to a depth of 1 m (0–30, 30–60, 60–90 cm). The results revealed that regardless of soil depth, all the carbon pools differed significantly (p < 0.05) among studied land use systems with maximum values observed under forest soils and lowest under paddy-oilseed soils. Further, upon evaluating the impact of soil depth, a significant (p < 0.05) decline and variation in all the carbon pools was observed with maximum values recorded in surface (0–30 cm) soils and least in sub-surface (60–90 cm) layers. CMI was higher in forest soils and lowest in paddy-oilseed. From regression analysis, a positive significant association (high R-squared values) between CMI and soil organic carbon pools was also observed at all three depths. Therefore, land use changes and soil depth had a significant impact on soil organic carbon pools and eventually on CMI, which is used as deterioration indicator or soil carbon rehabilitation that influences the universal goal of sustainability in the long run