In Vitro Models of the Blood-Cerebrospinal Fluid Barrier and Their Applications in the Development and Research of (Neuro)Pharmaceuticals.

The pharmaceutical research sector has been facing the challenge of neurotherapeutics development and its inherited high-risk and high-failure-rate nature for decades. This hurdle is partly attributable to the presence of brain barriers, considered both as obstacles and opportunities for the entry of drug substances. The blood-cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) barrier (BCSFB), an under-studied brain barrier site compared to the blood-brain barrier (BBB), can be considered a potential therapeutic target to improve the delivery of CNS therapeutics and provide brain protection measures. Therefore, leveraging robust and authentic in vitro models of the BCSFB can diminish the time and effort spent on unproductive or redundant development activities by a preliminary assessment of the desired physiochemical behavior of an agent toward this barrier. To this end, the current review summarizes the efforts and progresses made to this research area with a notable focus on the attribution of these models and applied techniques to the pharmaceutical sector and the development of neuropharmacological therapeutics and diagnostics. A survey of available in vitro models, with their advantages and limitations and cell lines in hand will be provided, followed by highlighting the potential applications of such models in the (neuro)therapeutics discovery and development pipelines.

Neuroprotective Effects of Heat Shock Protein70.

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE: Heat Shock Proteins (HSPs) increase response to many stresses in cells. Stroke is a neural shock that leads to the destruction of a large number of brain cells, whereas induction and expression of HSPs can decrease the amount of damage, and in some conditions can cure damaged cells. HSP70 family is considered as the most important member of HSPs in normal and stress condition of cells. They are strongly up-regulated by stresses and have protective roles in under stressed cells. Therefore, in this review, we briefly consider the association between HSP70 and stroke. We searched in Pubmed and Scopus databases using the specified keywords and selected the articles based on the certain association between HSP70 and stroke. HSP70 protects cells from damage through a variety of cellular and biochemical processes such as chaperone function, anti-apoptotic, anti-necrotic and anti-inflammatory mechanisms. CONCLUSION: Protective effects of HSP70 in neurodegenerative shocks are illustrated in the review, and it can be concluded that the induction of HSP70 in stresses can be considered as a therapeutic factor, although it needs further studies.

Rational design and engineering of a mutant variant of urate oxidase as a therapeutic enzyme: a molecular dynamics simulation approach.

BACKGROUND: Urate oxidase is absent in humans so the enzyme is considered as an important therapeutic agent to control hyperuricemic disorders. Currently available enzymes with pharmaceutical applications have adverse effects associated with allergic reactions and anaphylactic shocks, in case of chronic treatment. Therefore, developing variant forms of the enzyme, with lower immunogenicity and similar or higher activity, is of great importance. AIM: Here, we tried to improve the structure of a recently resurrected ancestral mammalian urate oxidase (which is claimed to have higher enzymatic activity compared to other mammalian counterparts) by introducing eight rational mutations and verified the consequence of these mutations on immunogenicity, stability and the affinity of protein to uric acid by computational techniques. METHODS: After modeling the full-length wild-type and mutant structures, structural dynamics were monitored through 20 ns and 50 ns of molecular dynamics simulation by GROMACS software package for the structures holding and lacking uric acid, respectively. RESULTS: Simulation results implied maintenance of 3D arrangement, volume and compactness between wild-type and mutant structures. However residues of the mutated structure showed a higher tendency for hydrogen bond formation leading to a more stable and more soluble protein package with a higher surface area buried between protein chains. We also used the DiscoTope-2.0 server to map changes in immunogenicity index of 50 structures derived from the last 10ns of simulation. CONCLUSION: Finally, this study suggests a urate oxidase mutant with improved overall stability, reduced immunogenicity and slightly lower affinity for uric acid compared to the resurrected ancestral mammalian urate oxidase.

Bioinformatics evaluation of the possibility of heat shock proteins as autoantigens in multiple sclerosis based on molecular mimicry hypothesis.

Molecular mimicry is the explanatory link between the heat shock proteins (HSPs) of infectious agents and triggering multiple sclerosis. Considering that there are many similarities between self- and bacterial-HSPs, the goal was to investigate a panel of 60- and 70kDa HSPs from a variety of bacteria in order to predict the role of each microorganism in triggering or progression of the disease under the molecular mimicry hypothesis. By clarifying the peptides meeting criteria for cross-reactivity and elucidating the role of each microorganism in MS pathogenesis, it would be easier to suggest more effective treatment and preventive strategies for this disease.

Engineering Human Urate Oxidase: Towards Reactivating It as an Important Therapeutic Enzyme.

Urate oxidase is considered as an important therapeutic enzyme used to control hyperuricemia. In spite of widespread distribution in numerous (micro)organisms, active urate oxidase is absent in higher primates (humans and apes) due to gene mutations. Considering the therapeutic significance of urate oxidase, further understanding on the inactivation process of the enzyme during primate evolution is critical. This study, therefore, aims to express genetically modified human urate oxidase in the methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris. Accordingly, the genetically modified human urate oxidase was successfully expressed intracellularly and extracellularly under the control of an alcohol oxidase promoter and was subjected to the enzyme activity assay. The results demonstrated that reactivating the non-functional human urate oxidase gene fully or even moderately by simply replacing the premature stop codons is impossible. This finding confirms the idea that a number of successive loss-of-function missense mutations occurred during evolution, making higher primates functional uricase-deficit and vulnerable to hyperuricemic disorders.

Cloning, expression, and purification of a synthetic human growth hormone in Escherichia coli using response surface methodology.

The aim of this study was to achieve high-level production of the human growth hormone (hGH) in the prokaryotic expression system. In this regard, we performed cloning, expression, and purification of a synthetic hGH gene in BL21 (DE3) strain of E. coli. The hGH production was determined by SDS-PAGE and western blotting techniques, and then the protein concentration was determined by the Bradford assay. To gain insight into the effect of different nutrients on the growth of E. coli and hGH production, in a preliminary assessment nine different types of the basal medium were analyzed. The highest growth of E. coli and hGH production were observed in TB and SOB media. Accordingly, design of experiments was employed for screening the most significant nutrients, and central composite face design was applied for the optimization. The optimum medium consisted of yeast extract (10 g/L), tryptone (10 g/L), and K2HPO4 (2 g/L). The optimum hGH concentration was 391 mg/L, which was 3-fold higher than the hGH concentration in the LB basal medium (119 mg/L). This production rate is the highest hGH concentration reported in the IPTG-inducible expression systems.

Nattokinase: production and application.

Nattokinase (NK, also known as subtilisin NAT) (EC 3.4.21.62) is one of the most considerable extracellular enzymes produced by Bacillus subtilis natto. The main interest about this enzyme is due to its direct fibrinolytic activity. Being stable enough in the gastrointestinal tract makes this enzyme a useful agent for the oral thrombolytic therapy. Thus, NK is regarded as a valuable dietary supplement or nutraceutical. Proven safety and ease of mass production are other advantages of this enzyme. In addition to these valuable advantages, there are other applications attributed to NK including treatment of hypertension, Alzheimer's disease, and vitreoretinal disorders. This review tends to bring a brief description about this valuable enzyme and summarizes the various biotechnological approaches used in its production, recovery, and purification. Some of the most important applications of NK, as well as its future prospects, are also discussed.

The possible role of HSPs on Behçet's disease: a bioinformatic approach.

Current evidence lends increasing support to immunoinflammatory mechanisms as one of the prime pathogenic processes involved in the development and progression of Behçet's disease (BD). It has been observed that most human beings have cellular and humoral reactions against microbial heat shock proteins (HSPs). The observation that eukaryotic and prokaryotic HSPs have high sequence similarity promoted the hypothesis that HSPs might be potential candidates for molecular mimicry and could act as potentially dangerous autoantigens. In this study, using bioinformatics tools, we examined the hypothesis that HSPs (evolutionarily conserved proteins), which are present in pathogenic and commensal organisms and their hosts, provide the stimulus that initiates BD in susceptible individuals. In this regards, the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of the human HSP 60 kDa and bacterial HSP 60 kDa deposited in the NCBI and PDB databases were subjected to analysis using bioinformatics tools, including The CLC Sequence Viewer and MEGA softwares. These data showed that the sequence homology between bacterial and self HSPs (leading to cross-reactivity and molecular mimicry phenomenon) may be associated with the development of the disease; and suggesting that microbial HSPs, which cross-react with host tissues and elicit significant immune responses are possible pathogenetic agents involved in the development and progression of BD.

Cloning of a fibrinolytic enzyme (subtilisin) gene from Bacillus subtilis in Escherichia coli.

Several investigations are being pursued to enhance the efficacy and specificity of fibrinolytic therapy. In this regard, microbial fibrinolytic enzymes attracted much more medical interests during these decades. Subtilisin, a member of subtilases (the superfamily of subtilisin-like serine proteases) and also a fibrinolytic enzyme is quite common in Gram-positive bacteria, and Bacillus species stand out in particular, as many extracellular and even intracellular variants have been identified. In the present work, the subtilisin gene from Bacillus subtilis PTCC 1023 was cloned into the vector pET-15b and expressed in Escherichia coli strain BL21 (DE3). Total genomic DNA were isolated and used for PCR amplification of the subtilisin gene by means of the specific primers. SDS-PAGE and enzyme assay were done for characterizing the expressed protein. A ~1,100 bp of the structural subtilisin gene was amplified. The DNA and amino acid sequence alignments resulting from the BLAST search of subtilisin showed high sequence identity with the other strains of B. subtilis, whereas significantly lower identity was observed with other bacterial subtilisins. The recombinant enzyme had the same molecular weight as other reported subtilisins and the E. coli transformants showed high subtilisin activity. This study provides evidence that subtilisin can be actively expressed in E. coli. The commercial availability of subtilisin is of great importance for industrial applications and also pharmaceutical purposes as thrombolytic agent. Thus, the characterization of new recombinant subtilisin and the development of rapid, simple, and effective production methods are not only of academic interest, but also of practical importance.