Methylene blue in anticancer photodynamic therapy: systematic review of preclinical studies.

Background: Methylene blue has a long history of clinical application. Thanks to phenothiazine chromophore, it has potential in photodynamic anticancer therapy. In spite of the growing body of literature that has evaluated the action of this dye on different types of cancer, the systematic understanding of this problem is still lacking. Therefore, this systematic review was performed to study the efficacy of methylene blue in photodynamic anticancer therapy. Methods: This systematic review was carried out in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines, and the study protocol was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42022368738). Articles for the systematic review were identified through the PubMed database. SYRCLE's risk of bias tool was used to assess the studies. The results of systematic analysis are presented as narrative synthesis. Results: Ten studies met the inclusion criteria and these full texts were reviewed. In the selected articles, the dosage of dye infusion ranged from 0.04 to 24.12 mg/kg. The effectiveness of photodynamic therapy with methylene blue against different types of cancer was confirmed by a decrease in tumor sizes in seven articles. Conclusion: The results of the systematic review support the suggestions that photodynamic therapy with methylene blue helps against different types of cancer, including colorectal tumor, carcinoma, and melanoma. In cases of nanopharmaceutics use, a considerable increase of anticancer therapy effectiveness was observed. The further research into methylene blue in photodynamic anticancer therapy is needed. Systematic Review Registration: (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=368738), identifier (CRD42022368738).

Insights into the Pharmacological Effects of Flavonoids: The Systematic Review of Computer Modeling.

Computer modeling is a method that is widely used in scientific investigations to predict the biological activity, toxicity, pharmacokinetics, and synthesis strategy of compounds based on the structure of the molecule. This work is a systematic review of articles performed in accordance with the recommendations of PRISMA and contains information on computer modeling of the interaction of classical flavonoids with different biological targets. The review of used computational approaches is presented. Furthermore, the affinities of flavonoids to different targets that are associated with the infection, cardiovascular, and oncological diseases are discussed. Additionally, the methodology of bias risks in molecular docking research based on principles of evidentiary medicine was suggested and discussed. Based on this data, the most active groups of flavonoids and lead compounds for different targets were determined. It was concluded that flavonoids are a promising object for drug development and further research of pharmacology by in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo models is required.