Proteomic Investigation of COVID-19 Severity During the Tsunamic Second Wave in Mumbai.

Maharashtra was severely affected during the noxious second wave of COVID-19, with the highest number of cases recorded across India. The emergence of new symptoms and dysregulation of multiple organs resulted in high disease severity during the second wave which led to increased difficulties in understanding the molecular mechanisms behind the disease pathology. Exploring the underlying factors can help to relieve the burden on the medical communities to some extent by prioritizing the patients and, at the same time, opening avenues for improved treatments. In the current study, we have performed a mass-spectrometry-based proteomic analysis to investigate the disease pathology using nasopharyngeal swab samples collected from the COVID-19 patients in the Mumbai region of Maharashtra over the period of March-June 2021, the peak of the second wave. A total of 59 patients, including 32 non-severe and 27 severe cases, were considered for this proteomic study. We identified 23 differentially regulated proteins in severe patients as a host response to infection. In addition to the previously identified innate mechanisms of neutrophil and platelet degranulation, this study revealed significant alterations of anti-microbial peptide pathways in severe conditions, illustrating its role in the severity of the infectious strain of COVID-19 during the second wave. Furthermore, myeloperoxidase, cathepsin G, and profilin-1 were identified as potential therapeutic targets of the FDA-approved drugs dabrafenib, ZINC4097343, and ritonavir. This study has enlightened the role of the anti-microbial peptide pathway associated with the second wave in India and proposed its importance in potential therapeutics for COVID-19.

Progressive Trends in Hybrid Material-Based Chemiresistive Sensors for Nitroaromatic Compounds.

In the last decades, development of hybrid materials, especially inorganic-organic materials, coordination polymers, conducting polymers, carbon materials, and many more, has produced breakthroughs in diverse applications. Various advance materials have been reported in the literature using metal organic frameworks (MOFs), which compensate for the limitations of sensors. Diverse combinations of HMs not only offer excellent features, but also give a ray of hope for unprecedented advances in materials in different research areas, such as sensing, energy storage, catalysis, non-linear optics, drug-delivery systems, gas storage, etc. Chemiresistor sensors are a core enabling sensor technology and have led to much progress in the field of material science. Here, we have reviewed the recent progress in chemiresistive sensors based on HMs for nitroaromatic compounds, which could be beneficial for researchers that explore this field further. We have put emphasis on sensing mechanisms and the performance of diverse HMs for nitroaromatic sensing applications including pesticides, pollutants, explosives, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and persistent organic pollutants (POPs). In the end, we explored opportunities, challenges, and future perspectives in this emerging field.

Progressive Trends on the Biomedical Applications of Metal Organic Frameworks.

Novel materials have been developed because of technological advancements combined with material research. Metal-organic frameworks (MOF) technology has been investigated for biomedical applications in this line. Nonetheless, as our team has learned from current literature, selecting metal ions/organic linkers, synthesis techniques, water stability/solubility, toxicity, and the possibility of biomolecules/drugs (enzyme, protein, DNA/RNA, and antibodies, among others) tagging/conjugation are the major challenges/factors. These issues/factors have an impact on MOFs' performance in biomedical applications, and they also raise a lot of doubts about its real-time biological utility in the near future. We targeted a comprehensive review on the MOFs for biomedical applications to keep these considerations in mind. The evolution of MOF technology is based on their interesting features such as biological or pharmacological activity, biocompatibility, limited toxicity, and particular host-guest interactions, as well as environmental friendliness. In this paper, we have summarized the state-of-the-art progress pertaining to MOFs' biomedical applications such as biosensing, biomedical, and drug delivery applications in this field that is still very new.

Relative capability demonstration of luminescent Al-MOFs for ideal detection of nitroaromatic explosives.

Here, we have synthesised three luminescent Al MOFs i.e., Al-NTP, Al-FDA, and Al-TDA, using common metal ions (AlCl3·6H2O) with different carboxylic acid organic linkers (5-nitroisophthalic acid, 2,5-furan dicarboxylic acid, and 2,5-thiophenedicarboxylic acid) in a semi-aqueous medium. The structural analysis of Al-MOFs has been confirmed through powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and absorption spectroscopy. Afterward, the optical properties of all three Al-MOFs were confirmed using photoluminescence spectroscopy and demonstrated for the detection of nitroaromatic explosives. We have observed host-guest interaction through a quenching mechanism. Among the three synthesised Al-MOFs, Al-NTP MOF exhibit 0.014 ppm lowest limit of detection in chloroform at room temperature. Our comparative study results reveal that the selection of the organic linker and solvent plays a critical role in MOF based sensing applications.