Use of Natural Compounds as a Potential Therapeutic Agent Against COVID-19.

The current 2019-nCoV outbreak is becoming extremely harmful and has affected the whole world. Its control is challenging because there is no effective vaccine or drug available for coronavirus disease. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), previously named as 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), primarily targets the human respiratory system to lung lesions and lethal pneumonia. Natural products have always shown a crucial role in the process of drug development against various diseases. They may serve as leads for further drug development to combat emergent mutants of the coronavirus. In this review, the current status of natural compounds and their derivatives acting against different species of CoV are discussed.

Antioxidant, Antimicrobial Activity and Medicinal Properties of Grewia asiatica L.

Since ancient time, India is a well known subcontinent for medicinal plants where diversity of plants is known for the treatment of many human disorders. Grewia asiatica is a dicot shrub belonging to the Grewioideae family and well known for its medicinally important fruit commonly called Falsa. G. asiatica, a seasonal summer plant is distributed in the forest of central India, south India, also available in northern plains and western Himalaya up to the height of 3000 ft. Fruits of G. asiatica are traditionally used as a cooling agent, refreshing drink, anti-inflammatory agent and for the treatment of some urological disorders. Recent advancement of Falsa researches concluded its antimicrobial and anti-diabetic activity. Since ancient time medicinal plants are traditionally used for the treatment of different diseases G. asiatica fruit is the edible and tasty part of the plant, now considered as a valuable source of unique natural product for the development of medicines which are used in different disease conditions like anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancerous and antimicrobial. Now a days, G. asiatica is being used in different Ayurvedic formulation for the cure of different types of diseases. Different pharmacological investigations reveal the presence of phenols, saponnins, flavonoids and tannins compound in the fruits. Present review highlights the phytopharmacological and different traditional use of G. asiatica which is mentioned in ancient Ayurvedic texts. This review stimulates the researchers and scientists for further research on G. asiatica.

Homology modeling and virtual screening of inhibitors against TEM- and SHV-type-resistant mutants: A multilayer filtering approach.

TEM and SHV are class-A-type ß-lactamases commonly found in Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Previous studies reported S130G and K234R mutations in SHVs to be 41- and 10-fold more resistant toward clavulanic acid than SHV-1, respectively, whereas TEM S130G and R244S also showed the same level of resistance. These selected mutants confer higher level of resistance against clavulanic acid. They also show little susceptibility against other commercially available ß-lactamase inhibitors. In this study, we have used docking-based virtual screening approach in order to screen potential inhibitors against some of the major resistant mutants of SHV and TEM types ß-lactamase. Two different inhibitor-resistant mutants from SHV and TEM were selected. Moreover, we have retained the active site water molecules within each enzyme. Active site water molecules were placed within modeled structure of the mutant whose structure was unavailable with protein databank. The novelty of this work lies in the use of multilayer virtual screening approach for the prediction of best and accurate results. We are reporting five inhibitors on the basis of their efficacy against all the selected resistant mutants. These inhibitors were selected on the basis of their binding efficacies and pharmacophore features.