Herbal Drugs Inducing Autophagy for the Management of Cancer: Mechanism and Utilization.

When compared to chemical medicines, herbal medicines have the greatest therapeutic benefit while having fewer harmful side effects. Many different components in herbs have an anticancer impact, but the exact mechanism of how they work is unknown. Some herbal medicines have even been shown to trigger autophagy, a process that has shown promise as a potential cancer treatment. In the past ten years, autophagy has come to be recognised as a crucial mechanism in the maintenance of cellular homeostasis, which has led to the discovery of its implications in the pathology of the majority of cellular environments as well as human disorders. Autophagy is a catabolic process that is used by cells to maintain their homeostasis. This process involves the degradation of misfolded, damaged, and excessive proteins, as well as nonfunctional organelles, foreign pathogens, and other cellular components. Autophagy is a highly conserved process. In this review article, several naturally occurring chemicals are discussed. These compounds offer excellent prospects for autophagy inducers, which are substances that can hasten the death of cells when used as a complementary or alternative treatment for cancer. It requires additional exploration in preclinical and clinical investigations, notwithstanding recent advances in therapeutic medications or agents of natural products in numerous cancers. These advancements have been made despite the need for further investigation.

Treatment Management of Diabetic Wounds Utilizing Herbalism: An Overview.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Diabetes Mellitus, commonly known as DM, is a metabolic disorder which is characterized by high blood glucose level, i.e., chronic hyperglycemia. If it is not managed properly, DM can lead to many severe complexities with time and can cause significant damage to the kidneys, heart, eyes, nerves and blood vessels. Diabetic foot ulcers (DFU) are one of those major complexities which affect around 15-25% of the population diagnosed with diabetes. Due to diabetic conditions, the body's natural healing process slows down leading to longer duration for healing of wounds only when taken care of properly. Herbal therapies are one of the approaches for the management and care of diabetic foot ulcer, which utilizes the concept of synergism for better treatment options. With the recent advancement in the field of nanotechnology and natural drug therapy, a lot of opportunities can be seen in combining both technologies and moving towards a more advanced drug delivery system to overcome the limitations of polyherbal formulations. METHODS: During the writing of this document, the data was derived from existing original research papers gathered from a variety of sources such as PubMed, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar. CONCLUSION: Hence, this review includes evidence about the current practices and future possibilities of nano-herbal formulation in treatment and management of diabetic wounds.

Hits and misses in treatment of ESCPM gram negative infections.

Treatment of Enterobacter infections is complex and often associated with development of resistance when wrong antibiotics are chosen for treatment despite in vitro susceptibility. This infectious diseases grand round highlights two cases, how antimicrobial and diagnostic stewardship approach could detect and prevent development of such resistance in - vivo.

Pharmacotherapy of Insomnia and Current Updates.

Insomnia is highly prevalent and is associated with a range of psychological, psychiatric, and medical conditions. Insomnia affects health by influencing cognitive, emotional and social functioning. Circadian and sleep homeostatic processes play an important role in insomnia development and its maintenance. Several efficacious treatments, both pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic, exist for the management of insomnia. Among non-pharmacologic treatments including stimulus control therapy, sleep restriction, relaxation, sleep hygiene and cognitive therapy have been shown to be efficacious. Pharmacological treatment acts as adjuvant to cognitive behavioural treatment. Despite availability of various classes drugs for insomnia treatment, none can be considered as an ideal agent. Novel therapies are still being explored and tested to arrive at a hypnotic that has acceptable side effects and tolerability profile while still being efficacious.

Extraction and characterization of artocarpus integer gum as pharmaceutical excipient.

BACKGROUND: Natural polymers are widely used as excipients in pharmaceutical formulations. They are easily available, cheap and less toxic as compared to synthetic polymers. OBJECTIVES: This study involves the extraction and characterization of kathal (Artocarpus integer) gum as a pharmaceutical excipient. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Water was used as a solvent for extraction of the natural polymer. Yield was calculated with an aim to evaluate the efficacy of the process. The product was screened for the presence of Micrometric properties, and swelling index, flow behavior, surface tension, and viscosity of natural polymers were calculated. RESULTS: Using a water based extraction method, the yield of gum was found to be 2.85%. Various parameters such as flow behavior, organoleptic properties, surface tension, viscosity, loss on drying, ash value and swelling index together with microscopic studies of particles were done to characterize the extracted gum. The result showed that extracted kathal gum exhibited excellent flow properties. The gum was investigated for purity by carrying out chemical tests for different phytochemical constituents and only carbohydrates were found to be present. It had a good swelling index (13 ± 1). The pH and surface tension of the 1% gum solution were found to be 6 ± 0.5 and 0.0627 J/m2, respectively. The ash values such as total ash, acid insoluble ash, and water soluble ash were found to be 18.9%, 0.67% and 4% respectively. Loss on drying was 6.61%. The extracted gum was soluble in warm water and insoluble in organic solvents. The scanning electron micrograph (SEM) revealed rough and irregular particles of the isolated polymer. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the evaluated properties showed that kathal-derived gum has acceptable pH and organoleptic properties and can be used as a pharmaceutical excipient to formulate solid oral dosage forms.

Pyrimidine containing furanose derivative having antifungal, antioxidant, and anticancer activity.

BACKGROUND: A series of 6-(substituted aldehyde)-3,4-dihydro-1-(tetrahydro-3,4-dihydroxy-5-(hydroxymethyl) furan-2-yl)-4-phenylpyrimidine-2(1H)-one derivative (6A-6P) was synthesized from the 6-(substituted aldehyde)-4-phenylpyrimidine-2(1H)-one derivative (5A-5P) through following reaction mechanisms Claisen-Schmidt, Cyclization, and Satos fusion. The structures of the synthesized compounds were elucidated by I.R.,(1)H-NMR, elemental analysis, and mass spectroscopic techniques. RESULT: The synthesized compounds were screened for in vitro antifungal activity at 25, 50, 100, and 200 µg/ml concentrations. Among them, compounds 6P, 6D, and 6M exhibited significant antifungal activity that was carried out by cup plate method against fungal strain which was collected from IMTECH Chandigarh, India, against standard drug fluconazole. Compounds have been further evaluated by measuring zone of inhibition and percent inhibition. The synthesized compounds were screened for in vitro antioxidant activity using the DPPH assay, based on the AAI and antioxidant activity unit (AAU), using a combination relation between DPPH concentration and absorbance. The antioxidant strength of compounds was compared against ascorbic acid. Among them, compounds 6K, 6F, 6E, 6G, 6H, and 6M exhibited significant antioxidant activity and 6J have less active compound. The data of these synthesized compounds were submitted to the National Institute of Health, USA, under the drug discovery program of National Cancer Institute (NCI) and screened for anticancer activity at a single high dose (10(-5) M) in full NCI 60 cell lines. The selected compounds have shown potent significant anticancer activity in the NCI 60 cell line screening. CONCLUSION: A new series of pyrimidine analogues that contain furanose moiety were synthesized by Satos fusion and characterized. The synthesized compounds screened for their in vitro antioxidant, antifungal activity, as well as anticancer activity given by the derivative which has chloro, methoxy, nitro, and chloro substitution having furanose contain pyrimidine derivative that showed the most potent activity.

Release behavior of drugs from various natural gums and polymers.

Polymers are the high molecular weight compounds of natural or synthetic origin, widely used in drug delivery of formulations. These polymers are further classified as hydrophilic or hydrophobic in nature. Depending upon this characteristic, polymers exhibit different release behavior in different media. This property plays an important role in the selection of polymers for controlled, sustained or immediate release formulations. The review highlights the literatures related to the research made on several polymers regarding the release kinetics which made them a novel approach for modifying the action of the particular formulation.