Biotechnology drugs

Cytidine triphosphate (CTP), as a substance involved in the metabolism of phospholipids, proteins and nucleic acids, has precise drug effects and is a direct precursor for the synthesis of drugs such as citicoline. In this study, we established an in vitro six-enzyme cascade system to generate CTP. To avoid thermodynamic bottlenecks, we employed a circuitous and two-stage reaction strategy. Using cytidine as the key substrate, the final product CTP is obtained via the deamination and uridine phosphorylation pathways, relying on the irreversible reaction of cytidine triphosphate synthase to catalyze the amination of uridine triphosphate...

Biliverdin, a bile pigment hydrolyzed from heme by heme oxygenase (HO), serves multiple functions in the human body, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and immune response inhibitory activities. Biliverdin has great potential as a clinical drug; however, no economic and efficient production method is available currently. Therefore, the production of biliverdin by the biotransformation of exogenous heme using recombinant HO-expressing yeast cells was studied in this research. First, the heme oxygenase-1 gene (HO1) encoding the inducible plastidic isozyme from Arabidopsis thaliana, with the plastid transport peptide sequence removed, was recombined into Pichia pastoris GS115 cells...

The natural product pneumocandin B0 is the precursor of the antifungal drug caspofungin. To explore the relationship between pneumocandin B0 and oil. We found that the addition of 1 g/L of oil to the fermentation medium is more conducive to the production of pneumocandin B0 . The metabolic reaction mechanism was explored using different fatty acids and the results showed that stearic acid and acetic acid increased the total production of pneumocandin B0 by 22.98% and 9.08%, respectively, as well as increasing the content of intracellular lipid droplets...

This study examined potential of the extracts obtained from the byproducts generated at commercial pecan nut-shelling operations in cancer treatment. The subcritical water extracts obtained from two varieties, Native and Pawnee, were analyzed for their phenolic contents and compositions. Effects of the extracts on viability and IC50 of the human cell lines representing a broad range of cancer types, cervical, lung, skin, breast, colon and prostate cancers, were investigated. Although the effect of the temperature on the phenolic contents and compositions of the extracts was not statistically significant, the influence of the variety was extensive...

Ultrasonic manufacturing has emerged as a promising eco-friendly approach to synthesize lipid-based nanocarriers for targeted drug delivery. This study presents the novel ultrasonic preparation of lipid nanocarriers loaded with Scutellaria barbata extract, repurposed for anticancer and antibacterial use. High-frequency ultrasonic waves enabled the precise self-assembly of DSPE-PEG, Span 40, and cholesterol to form nanocarriers encapsulating the therapeutic extract without the use of toxic solvents, exemplifying green nanotechnology...

In this study, several approaches were tested to optimise the production and recovery of the widely used anticancer drug Taxol® (paclitaxel) from culturable vascular stem cells (VSCs) of Taxus baccata, which is currently used as a successful cell line for paclitaxel production. An in situ product recovery (ISPR) technique was employed, which involved combining three commercial macro-porous resin beads (HP-20, XAD7HP and HP-2MG) with batch and semi-continuous cultivations of the T. baccata VSCs after adding methyl jasmonate (Me-JA) as an elicitor...

This study prepared and evaluated polymeric polybutylcyanoacrylate (PBCA) nanoparticles (NPs) that can be used as a new agent for contrast-enhanced intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) imaging with drug delivery capacity. The nanoformulation was successfully developed using suspension polymerisation and characterised in terms of size, size distribution, zeta potential, morphology, stability, toxicity effects, imaging effects and drug release study. The results showed that the nanoparticles were round and hollow, with a particle diameter of 215...

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Nanoparticles bestow beneficial impacts on plants, specifically in increasing photosynthetic capacity and germination rate, pesticide delivery, managing pathogenicity and enhancing nutrient supply. The nanoparticles produced from the medicinal plant extracts are identified as an exceptional applicant in nanomedicine, cosmetics, and agriculture for the treatment of diseases as antimicrobial, antioxidant and anticancer agents, etc. Plant extracts actually have bioactive metabolites that provide therapeutic potential against a variety of diseases...

Quantum dots (QDs) have attracted considerable interest due to their potential applications and economic viability in various industrial sectors, such as communications, displays, and solar cells. This fascination originates from the quantum size effect-induced remarkable optical properties exhibited by QDs. In recent years, significant progress has been made in producing QDs devoid of cadmium, known to be toxic to cells and living organisms. These QDs have generated considerable interest in bioimaging due to their potential for targeting molecules and cells...

Tumors desmoplastic microenvironments are characterized by abundant stromal cells and extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), as the most abundant of all stromal cells, play significant role in mediating microenvironments, which not only remodel ECM to establish unique pathological barriers to hinder drug delivery in desmoplastic tumors, but also talk with immune cells and cancer cells to promote immunosuppression and cancer stem cells-mediated drug resistance. Thus, CAFs mediated desmoplastic microenvironments will be emerging as promising strategy to treat desmoplastic tumors...

Antibody drugs play a vital role in diagnostics and therapy. However, producing antibodies from mammalian cells is challenging owing to cellular heterogeneity, which can be addressed by applying droplet-based microfluidic platforms for high-throughput screening (HTS). Here, we designed an integrated system based on disulfide-bonded redox-responsive hydrogel beads (redox-HBs), which were prepared through enzymatic hydrogelation, to compartmentalize, screen, select, retrieve, and recover selected Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells secreting high levels of antibodies...

The continued rise of drug-resistant bacterial infections heightens a threat of a pandemic of antimicrobial resistance to the global health. The urgency of infection control against antimicrobial-resistant bacteria is evident. Ferroptosis, a newly defined form of iron-dependent cell death characterized by lipid peroxidation, has garnered substantial interest since this programmed cell death was associated with pathophysiological processes of many diseases. Exploring whether ferroptosis could be utilized in infectious diseases holds significant importance for discovering novel antimicrobial approaches...

Pyroptosis, a novel type of programmed cell death (PCD), which provides a feasible therapeutic option for the treatment of tumors. However, due to the hypermethylation of the promoter, the critical protein Gasdermin E (GSDME) is lacking in the majority of cancer cells, which cannot start the pyroptosis process and leads to dissatisfactory therapeutic effects. Additionally, the quick clearance, systemic side effects, and low concentration at the tumor site of conventional pyroptosis reagents restrict their use in clinical cancer therapy...

BACKGROUND: Most recombinant Komagataella phaffii (Pichia pastoris) strains for protein production are generated by genomic integration of expression cassettes. The clonal variability in gene copy numbers, integration loci and consequently product titers limit the aptitude for high throughput applications in drug discovery, enzyme engineering or most comparative analyses of genetic elements such as promoters or secretion signals. Circular episomal plasmids with an autonomously replicating sequence (ARS), an alternative which would alleviate some of these limitations, are inherently unstable in K...

The formation of pores over lipid membranes by the application of electric fields, termed membrane electroporation, is widely used in biotechnology and medicine to deliver drugs, vaccines, or genes into living cells. Continuum models for describing the free energy landscape of membrane electroporation were proposed decades ago, but they have never been tested against spatially detailed atomistic models. Using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with a recently proposed reaction coordinate, we computed potentials of mean force of pore nucleation and pore expansion in lipid membranes at various transmembrane potentials...

Under the umbrella of targeted drug delivery systems, several techniques are unleashed in the market that allow a drug or other pharmacologically active material to be delivered to the target cell to treat a condition or health problem. The improvement of the pharmaceutical delivery systems' effectiveness, safety, and stability is accomplished through the Formulation of the nano-gel-based delivery system. Nanogels are aqueous dispersions of submicronsized, three-dimensional, strongly cross-linked networks of hydrophilic polymers that are inflated by water...

BACKGROUND: The field of nanobiotechnology uses precise nanofabrication techniques to advance our understanding and control of biological systems. Due to their remarkable properties, dendrimers, which are hyperbranched macromolecular structures with distinct and well-defined architectures, have emerged as pivotal entities within this field. They are gaining increasing attention for their potential to catalyze a paradigm shift in medical therapeutics, biotechnological applications, and advanced material sciences...

This detailed review disclosed the NF-κB pro-inflammatory gen's activity regulation and explored the therapeutic significance, activation, and inhibition. This study uncovers the structural intricacies of the NF-κB proteins and highlights the key role of SIRT1 in NF-kB signaling pathway regulation. Particularly the Rel Homology Domain (RHD), elucidating interactions and the regulatory mechanisms involving inhibitory proteins like IκB and p100 within the NF-κB signaling cascade. Disruption of the pathway is important in uncontrolled inflammation and immune disorders...

Although biopharmaceuticals constitute around 10% of the drug landscape, eight of the ten top-selling products were biopharmaceuticals in 2023. This study did a comprehensive analysis of the FDA's Purple Book database. Firstly, our research uncovered market trends and provided insights into biologics distributions. According to the investigation, although biotechnology has advanced and legislative shifts have made the approval process faster, there are still challenges to overcome, such as molecular instability and formulation design...