Advances in Animal Models and Cutting-Edge Research in Alternatives: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on 3Rs Research and Progress, Hyderabad, 2021.

The fact that animal models fail to replicate human disease faithfully is now being widely accepted by researchers across the globe. As a result, they are exploring the use of alternatives to animal models. The time has come to refine our experimental practices, reduce the numbers and eventually replace the animals used in research with human-derived and human-relevant 3-D disease models. Oncoseek Bio-Acasta Health, which is an innovative biotechnology start-up company based in Hyderabad and Vishakhapatnam, India, organises an annual International Conference on 3Rs Research and Progress. In 2021, this conference was on 'Advances in Research Animal Models and Cutting-Edge Research in Alternatives'. This annual conference is a platform that brings together eminent scientists and researchers from various parts of the world, to share recent advances from their research in the field of alternatives to animals including new approach methodologies, and to promote practices to help refine animal experiments where alternatives are not available. This report presents the proceedings of the conference, which was held in hybrid mode (i.e. virtual and in-person) in November 2021.

Effect of processing temperature on dynamic rheological properties and color degradation kinetics of bael fruit pulp.

BACKGROUND: A lack of knowledge about the dynamic rheological properties and color degradation of bael fruit pulp gives rise to many problems during thermal processing for the preparation of bael fruit products. In this research, the effects of processing temperature (30-75 °C) on dynamic rheology and color degradation kinetics of bael fruit pulp were studied and analyzed. RESULTS: Bael fruit pulp showed more elastic behavior than viscous behavior by analyzing the storage modulus, loss modulus and phase angle over oscillatory frequency range 0.06-300 rad s-1 . The dynamic rheological study classified the bael fruit pulp as a weak gel (G' > G″). The values of first-order degradation rate constant (k) were determined to be 0.07, 0.011, 0.018 and 0.023 for 30, 45, 60 and 75 °C, respectively. The first-order color degradation kinetics of bael fruit pulp has given a higher value of activation energy (Ea = 23.83 kJ mol-1 ) with coefficient of determination (R2 ) of 0.99, which indicated a higher sensitivity for treatment temperature and time during processing. CONCLUSIONS: The results obtained would allow simplification of processes for easier formulation of quality products from bael fruit pulp. This study has the potential to increase the processing ability of bael fruit, which will encourage a greater production of bael fruits. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.

Impact of Chemotherapeutic Stress Depends on The Nature of Breast Cancer Spheroid and Induce Behavioral Plasticity to Resistant Population.

Cellular or tumor dormancy, identified recently as one of the main reasons behind post-therapy recurrence, can be caused by diverse reasons. Chemotherapy has recently been recognized as one of such reasons. However, in-depth studies of chemotherapy-induced dormancy are lacking due to the absence of an in vitro human-relevant model tailor-made for such a scenario. This report utilized multicellular breast cancer spheroid to create a primary platform for establishing a chemotherapy-induced dormancy model. It is observed that extreme chemotherapeutic stress affects invasive and non-invasive spheroids differently. Non-invasive spheroids exhibit more resilience and maintain viability and migrational ability, while invasive spheroids display heightened susceptibility and improved tumorigenic capacity. Heterogenous spheroids exhibit increased tumorigenic capacity while show minimal survival ability. Further probing of chemotherapeutically dormant spheroids is needed to understand the molecular mechanism and identify dormancy-related markers to achieve therapeutic success in the future.