Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on routine vaccine landscape: A global perspective.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) threat is subsiding through extensive vaccination worldwide. However, the pandemic imposed major disruptions in global immunization programs and has aggravated the risks of vaccine-preventable disease (VPD) outbreaks. Particularly, lower-middle-income regions with minimal vaccine coverage and circulating vaccine-derived viral strains, such as polio, suffered additional burden of accumulated zero-dose children, further making them vulnerable to VPDs. However, there is no compilation of routine immunization disruptions and recovery prospects. There is a noticeable change in the routine vaccination coverage across different phases of the pandemic in six distinct global regions. We have summarized the impact of COVID-19 on routine global vaccination programs and also identified the prospects of routine immunization to combat COVID-like outbreaks.

Organ-specific host differential gene expression analysis in systemic candidiasis: A systems biology approach.

Patients admitted to the hospital with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) are at risk for acquiring mycotic infections in particular Candidemia. Candida albicans (C. albicans) constitutes an important component of the human mycobiome and the most common cause of invasive fungal infections. Invasive yeast infections are gaining interest among the scientific community as a consequence of complications associated with severe COVID-19 infections. Early identification and surveillance for Candida infections is critical for decreasing the COVID-19 mortality. Our current study attempted to understand the molecular-level interactions between the human genes in different organs during systematic candidiasis. Our research findings have shed light on the molecular events that occur during Candidiasis in organs such as the kidney, liver, and spleen. The differentially expressed genes (up and down-regulated) in each organ will aid in designing organ-specific therapeutic protocols for systemic candidiasis. We observed organ-specific immune responses such as the development of the acute phase response in the liver; TGF-pathway and genes involved in lymphocyte activation, and leukocyte proliferation in the kidney. We have also observed that in the kidney, filament production, up-regulation of iron acquisition mechanisms, and metabolic adaptability are aided by the late initiation of innate defense mechanisms, which is likely related to the low number of resident immune cells and the sluggish recruitment of new effector cells. Our findings point to major pathways that play essential roles in specific organs during systemic candidiasis. The hub genes discovered in the study can be used to develop novel drugs for clinical management of Candidiasis.

In-silico strategies to combat COVID-19: A comprehensive review.

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 since its emergence at Wuhan, China in December 2019 has been creating global health turmoil despite extensive containment measures and has resulted in the present pandemic COVID-19. Although the virus and its interaction with the host have been thoroughly characterized, effective treatment regimens beyond symptom-based care and repurposed therapeutics could not be identified. Various countries have successfully developed vaccines to curb the disease-transmission and prevent future outbreaks. Vaccination-drives are being conducted on a war-footing, but the process is time-consuming, especially in the densely populated regions of the world. Bioinformaticians and computational biologists have been playing an efficient role in this state of emergency to escalate clinical research and therapeutic development. However, there are not many reviews available in the literature concerning COVID-19 and its management. Hence, we have focused on designing a comprehensive review on in-silico approaches concerning COVID-19 to discuss the relevant bioinformatics and computational resources, tools, patterns of research, outcomes generated so far and their future implications to efficiently model data based on epidemiology; identify drug targets to design new drugs; predict epitopes for vaccine design and conceptualize diagnostic models. Artificial intelligence/machine learning can be employed to accelerate the research programs encompassing all the above urgent needs to counter COVID-19 and similar outbreaks.

Novel cyclohexanone compound as a potential ligand against SARS-CoV-2 main-protease.

No commercially available drug candidate has yet been devised which is unique to and not repurposed against SARS-CoV-2 and has high efficacy or safe toxicity profile or both. Taking curcumin as a reference compound, we identified a new commercially available cyclohexanone compound, ZINC07333416 with binding energy (-8.72 kcal/mol) better than that of popularly devised anti-Covid-19 drugs like viral protease inhibitor Lopinavir, nucleoside analogue Remdesivir and the repurposed drug hydroxychloroquine when targeted to the active-site of SARS-CoV-2 Main protease (Mpro) through docking studies. The ligand ZINC07333416 exhibits crucial interactions with major active site residues of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro viz. Cys145 and His41 involving in the protease activity; as well as GLU-166 and ASN-142 which plays the pivotal role in the protein-dimerization. The protein-ligand stable interaction was further confirmed with molecular dynamics simulation (MDS) studies. Based on virtual assessment, ZINC07333416 also have significant values in terms of medicinal chemistry, pharmacokinetics, synthetic accessibility and anti-viral activity that encourage its experimental applications against COVID-19.

Vaccine repurposing approach for preventing COVID 19: can MMR vaccines reduce morbidity and mortality?

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is resulting in millions of infected individuals with several hundred thousands dead throughout the world. Amidst all the havoc, one interesting observation in the present COVID-19 pandemic is the negligible symptoms in the young; particularly children below 10 years of age. We assume the extensive pediatric vaccination with MMR vaccines followed globally could have resulted in innate immune responses, e.g., induction of interferons (IFNs) and activated natural killer (NK) cells, thereby offering natural immunity against SARS-CoV-2 in the young population. Possible cross-protective innate immunity offered by MMR vaccination prompted us to suggest repurposing MMR vaccination for immuno-prophylaxis against COVID-19.