Nornostocine congeners as potential anticancer drugs: An overview

Insight to biotechnological utility of phycochemicals from cyanobacterium Anabaena sp.: An overview

Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) are well-known for the ability to excrete extra-cellular products, as a variety of cyanochemicals (phycocompounds) of curio with several extensive therapeutic applications. Among these phycocompound, the cyanotoxins from certain water-bloom forming taxa are toxic to biota, including crocodiles. Failure of current non-renewable source compounds in producing sustainable and non-toxic therapeutics led the urgency of discovering products from natural sources. Particularly, compounds of the filamentous N2-fixing Anabaena sp. have effective antibacterial, antifungal, antioxidant, and anticancer properties. Today, such newer compounds are the potential targets for the possible novel chemical scaffolds, suitable for mainstream-drug development cascades. Bioactive compounds of Anabaena sp. such as, anatoxins, hassallidins and phycobiliproteins have proven their inherent antibacterial, antifungal, and antineoplastic activities, respectively. Herein, the available details of the biomass production and the inherent phyco-constituents namely, alkaloids, lipids, phenols, peptides, proteins, polysaccharides, terpenoids and cyanotoxins are considered, along with geographical distributions and morphological characteristics of the cyanobacterium. The acquisitions of cyanochemicals in recent years have newly addressed several pharmaceutical aliments, and the understanding of the associated molecular interactions of phycochemicals have been considered, for plausible use in drug developments in future.

Molecular dynamics simulation, synthesis and topoisomerase inhibitory actions of vanillin derivatives: a systematic computational structural integument

A series of 4-hydroxy-3-methoxy benzaldehyde (vanillin) derivatives (3a-3r) was designed for the principle of Schiff base condensation with several individual sulfanilamide analogues. The inhibitory potencies of the designed compounds were evaluated through molecular docking simulation studies against the targets, breast cancer-topo isomerase-IIα and estrogen receptor-α; and the top scoring poses with higher binding energy were selected to assess the mode of binding and stability of each complex through molecular dynamics simulations. Compounds that remained stable in the active sites of the both target receptors through a number of strong H-bonds and hydrophobic contacts were selected. Based on the computational results, these selected compounds, 3b, 3e and 3f were synthesized and were followed up for structural elucidation attempts, by FT/ATR, ¹H NMR and ¹³C NMR. From the experimental in vitro studies on 3b, 3e and 3f, the following remarkable activities against breast cancer cell line were done; IC₅₀ values of 3b, 3e and 3f were noted, 6.7, 4.3 and 11 ng/mL, respectively. These newly synthesized compounds may be used as novel inhibitors of nuclear receptors with potential therapeutic applications in control of cancer.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.

Biomedical Applications of Biosynthesized Gold Nanoparticles from Cyanobacteria: an Overview

Recently there had been a great interest in biologically synthesized nanoparticles (NPs) as potential therapeutic agents. The shortcomings of conventional non-biological synthesis methods such as generation of toxic byproducts, energy consumptions, and involved cost have shifted the attention towards green syntheses of NPs. Among noble metal NPs, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are the most extensively used ones, owing to the unique physicochemical properties. AuNPs have potential therapeutic applications, as those are synthesized with biomolecules as reducing and stabilizing agent(s). The green method of AuNP synthesis is simple, eco-friendly, non-toxic, and cost-effective with the use of renewable energy sources. Among all taxa, cyanobacteria have attracted considerable attention as nano-biofactories, due to cellular uptake of heavy metals from the environment. The cellular bioactive pigments, enzymes, and polysaccharides acted as reducing and coating agents during the process of biosynthesis. However, cyanobacteria-mediated AuNPs have potential biomedical applications, namely, targeted drug delivery, cancer treatment, gene therapy, antimicrobial agent, biosensors, and imaging.

Synthesis and antiproliferative activity characterization of new imidazothiazolotriazine oxindolylidene derivatives containing various substituents in the oxindole ring

Condensation of 1,3-diethyltetrahydroimidazo[4,5-е]thiazolo[3,2-b][1,2,4]triazine-2,7-dione with isatins followed by framework rearrangement in the thiazolotriazine moiety was used to synthesize two new series of oxindolylidenetetrahydroimidazo[4,5-е]thiazolo- [3,2-b][1,2,4]triazine-2,7-diones and oxindolylidenetetrahydroimidazo[4,5-е]thiazolo[2,3-c][1,2,4]triazine-2,8-diones containing various substituents in the oxindole moiety. The obtained compounds were tested for antiproliferative activity. The greatest activity was observed in the case of 1-alkyl-7-methyloxindolylidene derivatives of imidazo[4,5-е]thiazolo[2,3-c]triazine, which not only inhibited the growth of more than half of the studied cell lines, but also caused cell death in the SF-539 cell line (central nervous system cancer, mean growth percent -7.82%) and MDA-MB-435 (melanoma, -30.97 and -13.64%).

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10593-022-03125-3.

The recent development of thymol derivative as a promising pharmacological scaffold

Thymol (a phenol ring bearing active phytoconstituent) is a privileged scaffold, which is diversified in natural sources. This scaffold acts as an obligatory template for scheming and arriving at designing some newer drug-molecules with potential biological activities. In the pharmacological perspective, the promising active sites of the scaffold are the positions C-1, C-4, and C-6 of thymol that would be accountable for developing potent drug candidates. This review aims to explore the various synthetic routes and the structural-activity relationship of thymol scaffold with suitable active pharmacophore sites.

Role of hormone receptors and HER2 as prospective molecular markers for breast cancer: An update

This review provides an updated account on the current methods, principles and mechanism of action of therapies for the detection of molecular markers of therapeutic importance in the prognosis of breast cancer progression and recurrence, which includes estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor2 (HER2). Indeed, hormone-receptors namely, ER, PR, proto-oncogene HER2 are the basic molecular markers that are recognized and established prognostic factors and predictors of response, for therapeutic practice. These markers can be detected by using immunohistochemistry (IHC) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), which are established, faster and cost effective detection methods. These molecular markers along with clinicopathological prognostic parameters give the best prediction of the prognosis of cancer recurrence and progress. Finally, hormone receptors and HER2 as molecular markers are of prime therapeutic importance and have the capability to take part in future drug development techniques.

Biogenic silver nanoparticle synthesis with cyanobacterium Chroococcus minutus isolated from Baliharachandi sea-mouth, Odisha, and in vitro antibacterial activity

The burden from microbial diseases has to be addressed in an increasing pace due to multidrug resistance, causing clinical annoyance, globally. Indeed, employing eco-friendly approaches by green syntheses of nanoparticles with metals/metalloids as antibacterial compounds would be continual and cost-effective. Herein, the synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) by aqueous extracts of the cyanobacterium Chroococcus minutus (strain, CRLSUM10), collected from the meeting point of sea and river, East coast of India, are presented; both reducing and stabilizing mediators of the synthesized AgNPs were ascertained, by characteriztion by UV–visible spectrophotometry, XRD, FTIR, SEM and SEM-EDX. Furthermore, synthesized AgNPs had a remarkable antibacterial activity at the lowest dose, 100 mg against pathogenic strains of E. coli and S. pyogenes, rendering those as novel antibacterial agents against ‘upper respiratory tract infection’.