Therapeutic Efficacy of Moxifloxacin Mucoadhesive Hydrogel for Bacterial Keratitis

Bacterial keratitis is a hypothetically devastating corneal infection due to the opportunity of fast development; corneal devastation either to be completed in 24–48 hours with even more contagious bacterial aetiological agents. Moxifloxacin mucoadhesive Hydrogel was prepared by using polymer Hydroxy Propyl Methyl Cellulose E50 LV by hydration method. Moxifloxacin was dissolved in small quantity of water and Benzalkonium Chloride was added to the Polymer solution. The formulations were evaluated for clarity, pH measurement, spread-ability test, drug content estimation, viscosity study, in vitro diffusion study and antibacterial activity. The developed formulation exhibits the sustained release over a period of 10 hour. The optimized formulation was further evaluated with antimicrobial activity. The results of the in-vitro antimicrobial activity of hydrogel were satisfactory. Keywords: Corneal Infection, Hydrogel, Moxifloxacin, invitro releas

Induced Förster resonance energy transfer by encapsulation of DNA-scaffold based probes inside a plant virus based protein cage

Insight into the assembly and disassembly of viruses can play a crucial role in developing cures for viral diseases. Specialized fluorescent probes can benefit the study of interactions within viruses, especially during cell studies. In this work, we developed a strategy based on Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) to study the assembly of viruses without labeling the exterior of viruses. Instead, we exploit their encapsulation of nucleic cargo, using three different fluorescent ATTO dyes linked to single-stranded DNA oligomers, which are hybridised to a longer DNA strand. FRET is induced upon assembly of the cowpea chlorotic mottle virus, which forms monodisperse icosahedral particles of about 22 nm, thereby increasing the FRET efficiency by a factor of 8. Additionally, encapsulation of the dyes in virus-like particles induces a two-step FRET. When the formed constructs are disassembled, this FRET signal is fully reduced to the value before encapsulation. This reversible behavior makes the system a good probe for studying viral assembly and disassembly. It, furthermore, shows that multi-component supramolecular materials are stabilized in the confinement of a protein cage