Colonic Delivery of Nutrients for Sustained and Prolonged Release of Gut Peptides: A Novel Strategy for Appetite Management.

Obesity is one of the major global threats to human health and risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases and certain cancers. Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) plays a major role in appetite and glucose homeostasis and recently the USFDA approved GLP-1 agonists for the treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes. GLP-1 is secreted from enteroendocrine L-cells in the distal part of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract in response to nutrient ingestion. Endogenously released GLP-1 has a very short half-life of <2 min and most of the nutrients are absorbed before reaching the distal GI tract and colon, which hinders the use of nutritional compounds for appetite regulation. The review article focuses on nutrients that endogenously stimulate GLP-1 and peptide YY (PYY) secretion via their receptors in order to decrease appetite as preventive action. In addition, various delivery technologies such as pH-sensitive, mucoadhesive, time-dependent, and enzyme-sensitive systems for colonic targeting of nutrients delivery are described. Sustained colonic delivery of nutritional compounds could be one of the most promising approaches to prevent obesity and associated metabolic diseases by, e.g., sustained GLP-1 release.

In silico Study to Evaluate the Antiviral Activity of Novel Structures against 3C-like Protease of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) and SARS-CoV.

BACKGROUND: Globally, over 4.3 million laboratory confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported from over 105 countries. No FDA approved antiviral is available for the treatment of this infection. Zhavoronkov et al., with their generative chemistry pipeline, have generated structures that can be potential novel drug-like inhibitors for COVID-19, provided they are validated. 3C-like protease (3CLP) is a homodimeric cysteine protease that is present in coronaviruses. Interestingly, 3CLP is 96.1% structurally similar between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate interaction of generated structures with 3CLP of SARS-CoV (RCSB PDB ID: 4MDS). METHODS: Crystal structure of human SARS-CoV with a non-covalent inhibitor with resolution: 1.598 Å was obtained and molecular docking was performed to evaluate the interaction with generated structures. The MM-GBSA and IFD-SP were performed to narrow down to the structures with better binding energy and IFD score. The ADME analysis was performed on top 5 hits and further MD simulation was employed for top 2 hits. RESULTS: In XP docking, IFD-SP and molecular dynamic simulation studies, the top 2 hits 32 and 61 showed interaction with key amino acid residue GLU166. Structure 61, also showed interaction with HIS164. These interactions of generated structure 32 and 61, with GLU166 and HIS164, indicate the binding of the selected drug within the close proximity of 3CLP. In the MD simulation, the protein- ligand complex of 4MDS and structure 61 was found to be more stable for 10ns. CONCLUSION: These identified structures can be further assessed for their antiviral activity to combat SARS-CoV and COVID-19.