Nanotechnology-Based Approach in Tuberculosis Treatment.

Tuberculosis, commonly known as TB, is the second most fatal infectious disease after AIDS, caused by bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Prolonged treatment, high pill burden, low compliance, and stiff administration schedules are factors that are responsible for emergence of MDR and XDR cases of tuberculosis. Till date, only BCG vaccine is available which is ineffective against adult pulmonary TB, which is the most common form of disease. Various unique antibodies have been developed to overcome drug resistance, reduce the treatment regimen, and elevate the compliance to treatment. Therefore, we need an effective and robust system to subdue technological drawbacks and improve the effectiveness of therapeutic drugs which still remains a major challenge for pharmaceutical technology. Nanoparticle-based ideology has shown convincing treatment and promising outcomes for chronic infectious diseases. Different types of nanocarriers have been evaluated as promising drug delivery systems for various administration routes. Controlled and sustained release of drugs is one of the advantages of nanoparticle-based antituberculosis drugs over free drug. It also reduces the dosage frequency and resolves the difficulty of low poor compliance. This paper reviews various nanotechnology-based therapies which can be used for the treatment of TB.

Exploiting unique structural and functional properties of malarial glycolytic enzymes for antimalarial drug development.

Metabolic enzymes have been known to carry out a variety of functions besides their normal housekeeping roles known as "moonlighting functions." These functionalities arise from structural changes induced by posttranslational modifications and/or binding of interacting proteins. Glycolysis is the sole source of energy generation for malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, hence a potential pathway for therapeutic intervention. Crystal structures of several P. falciparum glycolytic enzymes have been solved, revealing that they exhibit unique structural differences from the respective host enzymes, which could be exploited for their selective targeting. In addition, these enzymes carry out many parasite-specific functions, which could be of potential interest to control parasite development and transmission. This review focuses on the moonlighting functions of P. falciparum glycolytic enzymes and unique structural differences and functional features of the parasite enzymes, which could be exploited for therapeutic and transmission blocking interventions against malaria.

Novel missense mutation in FHIT gene: interpreting the effect in HPV-mediated cervical cancer in Indian women.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is considered to be a major etiological factor but is not sufficient for the development of cervical cancer. Other host factors including altered tumor suppressor gene activities might contribute to the carcinogenic process. Fragile Histidine Triad (FHIT) has been shown to play a pivotal role in carcinogenesis. Therefore, we made an attempt to find out point mutation of FHIT gene in HPV mediated cervical cancer in Indian women. 112 cases of cervical carcinoma tissue biopsies and 38 cervical scrapes samples of normal cytology were employed for this study. Herein, we report a novel mutation identified at nucleotide position 655, at codon 98 from CAT --> CGT with ultimate replacement of amino acid Histidine by Arginine in cervical cancer cases. Molecular modeling was performed to predict the effect of this mutation in disease pathology. We predict that this change, His to Arg substitution in substrate-binding domain may generate catalytically inactive protein with loss of tumor suppressor activity.