Integrating gene expression and clinical data to identify drug repurposing candidates for hyperlipidemia and hypertension

Discovering novel uses for existing drugs, through drug repurposing, can reduce the time, costs, and risk of failure associated with new drug development. However, prioritizing drug repurposing candidates for downstream studies remains challenging. Here, we present a high-throughput approach to identify and validate drug repurposing candidates. This approach integrates human gene expression, drug perturbation, and clinical data from publicly available resources. We apply this approach to find drug repurposing candidates for two diseases, hyperlipidemia and hypertension. We screen >21,000 compounds and replicate ten approved drugs. We also identify 25 (seven for hyperlipidemia, eighteen for hypertension) drugs approved for other indications with therapeutic effects on clinically relevant biomarkers. For five of these drugs, the therapeutic effects are replicated in the All of Us Research Program database. We anticipate our approach will enable researchers to integrate multiple publicly available datasets to identify high priority drug repurposing opportunities for human diseases.

Potential Phytochemical Nanoemulsions in the Treatment of Oral Cancer and Oral Health

Oral cancer is one of the most common types of cancer, and lifestyle factors like extensive consumption of tobacco, betel quid, and alcohol are the major etiological factors of oral cancer. Treatment of oral cancer includes surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, but this treatment possesses lots of side effects. Therefore, scientists and medical experts are utilizing natural products and medicinal plants for new drug development. Natural products and phytochemicals showed better efficacy with less toxicity. However, most of the phytochemicals showed poor permeability and less bioavailability. To combat this problem, scientists developed nanosized nanoemulsions of phytochemicals to treat various ailments. Nanoemulsions of phytochemicals exhibited better efficacy than their free form due to increased permeability and bioavailability. Numerous phytopharmaceuticals have been formulated for nanoemulsions to date and tested for their anticancer potential against various cancers, including oral cancer and oral health management.

Usage and Analysis of Big Data in E-Health Domain

Big data analytics is a growth area with the potential to provide useful insight in healthcare. Big Data can unify all patient related data to get a 360-degree view of the patient to analyze and predict outcomes. It can improve clinical practices, new drug development and health care financing process. It offers a lot of benefits such as early disease detection, fraud detection and better healthcare quality and efficiency. This chapter introduces the Big Data concept and characteristics, health care data and some major issues of Big Data. These issues include Big Data benefits, its applications and opportunities in medical areas and health care. Methods and technology progress about Big Data are presented in this study. Big Data challenges in medical applications and health care are also discussed. While many dimensions of big data still present issues in its use and adoption, such as managing the volume, variety, velocity, veracity, and value, the accuracy, integrity, and semantic interpretation are of greater concern in clinical application.

Heparin and Its Derivatives: Challenges and Advances in Therapeutic Biomolecules

Heparin has been extensively studied as a safe medicine and biomolecule over the past few decades. Heparin derivatives, including low-molecular-weight heparins (LMWH) and heparin pentasaccharide, are effective anticoagulants currently used in clinical settings. They have also been studied as functional biomolecules or biomaterials for various therapeutic uses to treat diseases. Heparin, which has a similar molecular structure to heparan sulfate, can be used as a remarkable biomedicine due to its uniquely high safety and biocompatibility. In particular, it has recently drawn attention for use in drug-delivery systems, biomaterial-based tissue engineering, nanoformulations, and new drug-development systems through molecular formulas. A variety of new heparin-based biomolecules and conjugates have been developed in recent years and are currently being evaluated for use in clinical applications. This article reviews heparin derivatives recently studied in the field of drug development for the treatment of various diseases.