In Silico Drug-designing Studies on Sulforaphane Analogues: Pharmacophore Mapping, Molecular Docking and QSAR Modeling

Recent advances in anti-inflammatory active components and action mechanisms of natural medicines

Inflammation is a series of reactions caused by the body's resistance to external biological stimuli. Inflammation affects the occurrence and development of many diseases. Anti-inflammatory drugs have been used widely to treat inflammatory diseases, but long-term use can cause toxic side-effects and affect human functions. As immunomodulators with long-term conditioning effects and no drug residues, natural products are being investigated increasingly for the treatment of inflammatory diseases. In this review, we focus on the inflammatory process and cellular mechanisms in the development of diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, atherosclerosis, and coronavirus disease-2019. Also, we focus on three signaling pathways (Nuclear factor-kappa B, p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase, Janus kinase/signal transducer and activator of transcription-3) to explain the anti-inflammatory effect of natural products. In addition, we also classified common natural products based on secondary metabolites and explained the association between current bidirectional prediction progress of natural product targets and inflammatory diseases.

Ethnomedicinal uses of Indian spices used for cancer treatment: A treatise on structure-activity relationship and signaling pathways

Cancer is among the major cause of demise worldwide. Though the array of anticancer chemical medications is available but unfortunately, they are also associated with negative health effects. The invaluable therapeutic potential of spices makes them an integral part of our daily diet. Therefore, the present work focuses on the traditional uses of 46 spices and the phytochemical analysis of 31 spices. Out of them, only 29 spices are explored for their cytotoxicity against different cancer cell lines. The pre-clinical and clinical anticancer studies of spices along with their toxicity, mechanism of actions like Wnt/β-catenin, phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), JAK/STAT, mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), Notch-mediated pathways and Quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) studies were also focused. Curcumin was found as one of the most explored bioactive in every aspect such as in-vitro, in-vivo, clinical as well as SAR anticancer studies while some other bioactive such as 1,8-Cineole, trans-Anethole, Diosgenin, Trigonelline are either unexplored or least explored for their clinical and SAR studies. In fact, traditional medicinal uses of spices also provide solid shreds of evidence for the new leads towards the invention of novel anticancer agents. Therefore, further research can be designed for the anticancer marketed formulation from spices after having their placebo and related toxicological data.

Identification of Novel Rho-Kinase-II Inhibitors with Vasodilatory Activity

Small GTPase protein Rho-kinase (ROCK) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of hypertension. Inhibition of ROCK II brings about the biochemical changes leading to vascular smooth muscles relaxation, finally resulting into potent antihypertensive activity. In the quest for potent ROCK-II inhibitors, a ligand-based pharmacophore containing four essential chemical features, namely two hydrogen bond acceptor (HBA), one hydrogen bond donor (HBD), and one hydrophobe (HY), was developed and rigorously validated. The pharmacophore was used for virtual screening, and hits retrieved from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) database were sorted on the basis of fit value, estimate value, and Lipinski's violation. Potential feature interaction of hits was also observed during docking studies with the amino acids present in the active site of Rho-kinase. Based on the above screening, three hits (NSC 2488, NSC 2888, and NSC 4231) were chosen and subjected to in vitro Rho-kinase enzyme-based assay, followed by ex vivo rat aortic vasodilatory assay. All three compounds showed good biological activity as predicted by the model and confirmed by the docking studies.