scholarly journals HYPOTHESIS: TETRACYCLINES FOR SEVERE COVID-19 – THE PERFECT REPURPOSING CANDIDATE?

Author(s):  
Jose Garrido-Mesa ◽  
Kate Adams ◽  
Julio Galvez ◽  
Natividad Garrido Mesa

We would like to draw attention to the potential of immunomodulatory tetracyclines for severe COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic is having a devastating impact on developing countries. A successful approach to manage the scarcity of cost-effective therapies worldwide is drug repurposing. Predictions of direct anti-viral activity of tetracyclines against SARS-CoV2 have been confirmed experimentally. Furthermore, their effectiveness in experimental ARDS has been proven extensively, counteracting the overt inflammatory reaction and fibrosis sequelae due to a synergic combination of pharmacological activities. Finally, a few clinical reports have confirmed their potentiall in COVID-19 patients, encouraging the development of this novel indication. We believe that the benefits of their multi-target pharmacology and their safety profile place immunomodulatory tetracyclines as gold repurposing candidates for COVID-19.

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (28) ◽  
pp. 5340-5362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Chen ◽  
Giuseppe Gumina ◽  
Kristopher G. Virga

:As a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mostly affects older people, Parkinson’s disease is a growing health threat to our ever-aging population. Despite remarkable advances in our understanding of this disease, all therapeutics currently available only act to improve symptoms but cannot stop the disease progression. Therefore, it is essential that more effective drug discovery methods and approaches are developed, validated, and used for the discovery of disease-modifying treatments for Parkinson’s disease. Drug repurposing, also known as drug repositioning, or the process of finding new uses for existing or abandoned pharmaceuticals, has been recognized as a cost-effective and timeefficient way to develop new drugs, being equally promising as de novo drug discovery in the field of neurodegeneration and, more specifically for Parkinson’s disease. The availability of several established libraries of clinical drugs and fast evolvement in disease biology, genomics and bioinformatics has stimulated the momentums of both in silico and activity-based drug repurposing. With the successful clinical introduction of several repurposed drugs for Parkinson’s disease, drug repurposing has now become a robust alternative approach to the discovery and development of novel drugs for this disease. In this review, recent advances in drug repurposing for Parkinson’s disease will be discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 377-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
B.S. Jayashree ◽  
H. Venkatachalam ◽  
Sanchari Basu Mallik

Flavonoids constitute a large group of polyphenolic compounds that are known to have antioxidant properties, through their free radical scavenging abilities. They possess a chromone (γ- benzopyrone) moiety, responsible for eliciting many pharmacological activities. Even though, natural flavonoids are highly potent, owing to their poor solubility, they are less used. Therefore, attempts have been made to improve their stability, solubility, efficacy and kinetics by introducing various substituents on the flavone ring. For nearly the last two decades, flavones were synthesized in our laboratory by simple, convenient and cost-effective methods, with the knowledge of both synthetic and semi-synthetic chemistry. In this direction, it was considered worthwhile to present an overview on the synthesized flavonoids. This review creates a platform for highlighting various modifications done on the flavone system along with their biological activity.


Author(s):  
Rajeshwari Vittal ◽  
Juliet Roshini Mohan Raj ◽  
Ballamoole Krishna Kumar ◽  
Indrani Karunasagar

Abstract Legionella is a fastidious organism that is difficult to culture in the lab but is widely distributed in environmental, domestic, and hospital settings. The clinical manifestations due to Legionella infections range from mild fever to fatal pneumonia and multiorgan pathologies. Legionella outbreaks though prevalent globally are not reported in developing countries due to difficulties in isolating this organism and the lack of simple diagnostic protocols. Here, we review the literature from across countries to present various methods used to detect Legionella from environmental and clinical samples. We compare the sensitivity and the specificity of the conventional culture-based assays with the recent methods and discuss approaches to develop better detection and diagnostic tests. With better cost-effective detection techniques and regular monitoring of the susceptible sites, which may harbor Legionella colonies, most of the Legionella infections can be prevented. As a result, considerable burden, caused by Legionella infections, on the healthcare system, in especially economically weaker countries, can be mitigated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 603
Author(s):  
Darija Gajić ◽  
Slobodan Peulić ◽  
Tim Mavrič ◽  
Anna Sandak ◽  
Črtomir Tavzes ◽  
...  

Sustainable approaches for retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency are becoming necessary in a time when the building sector is the largest energy consumer. Retrofitting building stock is effective for reducing global energy consumption and decreasing resource exploitation. Less developed EU member states and neighboring developing countries show reluctance towards healthy and renewable materials. Implementation of sustainable materials for energy retrofitting is slowed down due to gaps in legislation and effective strategic programs, availability of bio-based materials, lack of knowledge regarding use and maintenance of renewable products, and marketing lobbies. Use of bio-based materials in refurbishment is important due to their negative or low global warming potential (GWP), low primary energy (PEI) need for production, cost-effective benefits, and recycling/reuse potential. Role of environmentally friendly solutions and low-carbon economy growth is particularly relevant in developing countries, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, that cannot afford innovative energy recovery systems, yet possess a significant amount of poorly managed building stock. This research aims to analyze frameworks regarding retrofitting of residential buildings in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia. The analysis tackles indirect causes, studies the legal background, and examines strategic frameworks; thus, it indicates potential barriers for implementation of recommended retrofitting solutions based on renewable materials.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarun Jairaj Narwani ◽  
Narayanaswamy Srinivasan ◽  
Sohini Chakraborti

AbstractComputational methods accelerate the drug repurposing pipelines that are a quicker and cost-effective alternative to discovering new molecules. However, there is a paucity of web servers to conduct fast, focussed, and customized investigations for identifying new uses of old drugs. We present the NOD web server, which has the mentioned characteristics. NOD uses a sensitive sequence-guided approach to identify close and distant homologs of a protein of interest. NOD then exploits this evolutionary information to suggest potential compounds from the DrugBank database that can be repurposed against the input protein. NOD also allows expansion of the chemical space of the potential candidates through similarity searches. We have validated the performance of NOD against available experimental and/or clinical reports. In 65.6% of the investigated cases in a control study, NOD is able to identify drugs more effectively than the searches made in DrugBank. NOD is freely-available at http://pauling.mbu.iisc.ac.in/NOD/NOD/.


Author(s):  
S. Afanas'ev ◽  
V. Kondrat’ev

For the next decade, the future of the automotive industry lies in BRIC’ countries. Together, Brazil, Russia, India, and China will account for some 30 percent of world auto sales in 2014 while also offering significant opportunities for cost-effective R&D, sourcing, and manufacturing. The authors analyze the degree of localization of leading TNC and supplies in each BRIC country, for each function, compare localization across BRIC countries, assess the future development of these markets, compare local capabilities and resources, and identify particularly promising combinations of functions and countries. Key trends in developing countries include continuing liberalization and globalization, increased foreign investment and ownership, and the increasing importance of follow-source and follow-design forces. The article concerns the trends and factors of national automotive industry formation in BRIC countries. Special emphasis is made on localization of R&D activities, final assembly operations and components production by global automotive companies in BRIC countries. It systemizes the factors of investment opportunities of different developing markets. It is concluded that active state regulation is playing the principle role in localization and catching-up process in automotive industry in developing countries. The comparison of the automotive industry in BRIC countries allows shedding light on the economic processes of emergence at large. There is a stark contrast in the capacities of development of the sector in these countries. This contrast serves as an analyzer between the modes of sector opening and the paths of technological catching-up that is the core of the phenomenon of emergence. The analysis and best practices presented in the topic, while focusing on the BRIC countries, are applicable also to other rapidly developing economies.


Lab on a Chip ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mercedes Vazquez ◽  
L. Anfossi ◽  
Hader Ben-Yoav ◽  
Lorena Diéguez ◽  
Thomas Karopka ◽  
...  

Classically, the need for highly sophisticated instruments with important economic costs has been a major limiting factor for clinical pathology laboratories, especially in developing countries. With the aim of making...


2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Christine Delucas

Recruitment of nurses by industrialized nations from developing countries has been common practice for decades. Globalization, a crucial trend of the 21st century, raises the world’s awareness of the economic and social disparities between nations. The direct impact on nurse emigration emphasizes the ethical, economic, and social inequalities between source and destination countries. It is often more cost-effective for industrialized countries to recruit from developing countries; however, the depletion of source country resources has created a global healthcare crisis. Destination countries are being challenged on the ethical implications of aggressive recruitment and their lack of developing a sustainable self-sufficient domestic workforce. Similarly, source countries are confronting the same challenges as they struggle to fund and educate adequate numbers of nurses for domestic needs and emigrant replacement. This article will review the ethical, economic, and social impacts of continued unrestricted international recruitment of nurses and present a proposal for development of an international treaty addressing global sustainability.


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