NDSRIs Crisis in Pharmaceuticals; Insights on Formation Pathways, Root Causes, Risk Management, and Novel Analytical Techniques.

The discovery of a new class of nitrosamine impurities called N-nitroso drug substance related impurities (NDSRIs) in pharmaceuticals has emerged as a significant challenge for the pharmaceutical sector due to their significant genotoxic and mutagenic effects. Regulatory bodies globally in active collaboration with all the concerned stake holders, are taking effective measures to prevent and control NDSRIs. This comprehensive review on NDSRIs discusses formation pathways, root cause analysis, acceptable intake limits, case studies, control strategies and regulatory responses pertaining to recent NDSRI incidents. This review discusses the novel liquid chromatographic techniques (LC- MS/MS, GC-MS/MS) used to identify and quantify of NDSRIs. This review would aid pharmaceutical professionals, R&D analytical and formulation scientists, and regulatory bodies in gaining deeper insights into the NDSRIs crisis, facilitating formulation of NDSRI-free drug products, and ensuring their sensitive detection with accurate risk evaluation.

Identification of Potential Insulinotropic Cytotoxins from Indian Cobra Snake Venom Using High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry and Analyzing Their Possible Interactions with Potassium Channel Receptors by In Silico Studies.

Snake venoms are a potential source of bioactive peptides, which have multiple therapeutic properties in treating diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and neurological disorders. Among bioactive peptides, cytotoxins (CTXs) and neurotoxins are low molecular weight proteins belonging to the three-finger-fold toxins (3FTxs) family composed of two ß sheets that are stabilized by four to five conserved disulfide bonds containing 58-72 amino acid residues. These are highly abundant in snake venom and are predicted to have insulinotropic activities. In this study, the CTXs were purified from Indian cobra snake venom using preparative HPLC and characterized using high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) TOF-MS/MS. Further SDS-PAGE analysis confirmed the presence of low molecular weight cytotoxic proteins. The CTXs in fractions A and B exhibited dose-dependent insulinotropic activity from 0.001 to 10 µM using rat pancreatic beta-cell lines (RIN-5F) in the ELISA. Nateglinide and repaglinide are synthetic small-molecule drugs that control sugar levels in the blood in type 2 diabetes, which were used as a positive control in ELISA. Concluded that purified CTXs have insulinotropic activity, and there is a scope to use these proteins as small molecules to stimulate insulinotropic activities. At this stage, the focus is on the efficiency of the cytotoxins to induce insulin. Additional work is ongoing on animal models to see the extent of the beneficial effects and efficiency to cure diabetes using streptozotocin-induced models.