Indian scientists find new anti-diabetic drugs from plant source

Indian scientists have found that a plant-derived substance called Chalcone can be used to make an effective anti-diabetic drug. Commercially available anti-diabetic drugs improve insulin sensitivity and reduce blood glucose levels. Scientists found that one such chalcone- aryloxypropanolamine works in the same manner. Chalcones, like flavonoids are ubiquitously found in many plants.

Patients with type-2 diabetes are unable to utilize sugars properly. After a meal, their blood glucose levels remain elevated for prolonged periods of time. Gradually, their muscles become insensitive to insulin, the hormone that converts unspent blood glucose into glycogen, which is stored in the liver. Since, the amount of glycogen also reduces with time, the patients develop cholesterol disorders. The levels of the beneficial HDL reduce in the blood, and the levels of harmful LDL increase. This makes diabetes a complex disorder.

Scientists report that treating muscle cells with chalcone improved glucose uptake. This makes chalcone particularly useful for diabetic patients. Since, their muscles are insensitive to insulin resulting in poor glucose uptake, chalcone can help manage diabetes by improving glucose uptake.

Further, to confirm the effects of chalcone on blood glucose, scientists used rats. Normal rats were fed with high sugar, after which their blood glucose levels were measured at regular intervals for up to a period of 6hours using a glucometer. They compared the effects of chalcone with commercial anti-diabetic drugs such as metformin, acarbose, pioglitazone, glybenclamide, janvuia, and galvus. They found that chalcone was as effective as other drugs in reducing blood glucose levels.

A similar effect was seen in animal models of type2-diabetes also. “Chalcone significantly inhibited the rise of blood glucose in animals and brought back the glucose levels to normal much earlier than commercial anti-diabetic drugs. Diabetic mice showed a decrease in total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol levels, and increased serum HDL-cholesterol like those of commercial anti-diabetic drugs”, claim scientists. 

Chalcones continues to function in the body for almost a day. Labs all over the world use streptozotocin-injected mice to find newer anti-diabetic drugs. Streptozotocin is a chemical that kills pancreatic cells that make insulin. These mice have low levels of insulin, and high blood glucose, making them near-perfect disease models of diabetes. “We found that all commercial anti-diabetic drugs and chalcone inhibited the rise in blood glucose in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats between 0 to 5hours, and the effect persisted till 24hours”, say scientists.

In addition to its efficacy, animal studies confirmed that chalcone is non-toxic and safe. It is stable under human stomach-like conditions, invigorating its potential as a good drug.

“The chalcone compound offers a promising lead for development as a drug for the management of type-2 diabetes mellitus”, say scientists at the CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. The results were published in a recent issue of Current Science. 

The research team comprised of Poonam Shukla, Mavurapu Satyanarayana, Prem C. Verma, Jaya Tiwari, Atma P Dwivedi, Rohit Srivastava, Neha Rehuja, Swayam P Srivastava, Sudeep Gautam, Akhilesh K Tamrakar, Anil K Dwivedi, Hari N. Kushwaha, Nagsen Gautam, Shio K Singh, Mukesh Srivastava, Chandishwar Nath, Ram Raghubir, Arvind K Srivastava, and Ram Pratap. 

This story was published by Down to Earth and India Science Wire. 

Reference: Current Science 112 (8): 1675-1689.

Scientists find gene that increases the risk of psoriasis

Alteration in sequence of some genes is associated with diseases in humans. Screening patients for the presence of such genetic changes helps doctors to ascertain risk and devise personalized treatment. It also helps in counselling parents about the risk of having the disease in their children.

Scientists at the Human Genetics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, and Department of Dermatology, SSKM Hospital, Kolkata have found that the gene IL12B is associated with psoriasis in Indian patients.

Psoriasis is a skin disease where the skin cells divide rapidly and form thick, red, dry, and itchy scales. It develops due to a faulty immune system that triggers skin cells to grow uncontrollably. Patients get these rashes mostly on face, neck, head, and joints. The cause of the disease is unknown but some individuals are genetically predisposed to having this disease.

A picture showing Psoriasis infection on a patient's hand. 

Scientists in Kolkata studied 814 patients from Eastern India with mild to severe psoriasis. Individuals with psoriasis were more likely to have alterations in the IL12B gene. Both their blood serum and skin lesions also had high levels of IL12B. They published their finding in the Journal of Human Genetics.

IL12B gene produces Interleukin-12 protein in the body. It induces inflammation by hyper activating the immune system. “We found that IL12B gene in strongly genetically associated with the pathogenesis of psoriasis. This indicates that IL12B might be playing a prominent role in psoriasis”, say scientists Aditi Chandra, Swapan Senapati, Saurabh Ghosh, Gobinda Chatterjee, and Raghunath Chatterjee. 

This story was published by FirstPost and India ScienceWire.

Reference: Journal of Human Genetics: 1–7.

Scientists a step closer to finding HIV vaccine

Developing an effective vaccine against HIV remains a challenge to date. Indian scientists have identified a new antibody against HIV subtype-C from Indian patients. This finding will help design vaccines against HIV in the future. When given with retroviral drugs, it will reduce HIV virus load in patients. This will also help in passive immunotherapy, which is killing low amounts of virus in patients who have accidentally been infected with the virus.

HIV-1 virus that causes AIDS has three subtypes A, B, and C, based on its genetic sequence. HIV subtype-C affects more than 50% of the patients globally and more than 90% patients in India and South Africa. Making a vaccine against HIV remains a challenge because the virus changes its proteins vey rapidly in the body. The immune system is unable to cope up and the virus is able to spread rapidly.

The immune system is constantly fighting under an HIV infection. HIV infection in the body elicits a natural immune response, where cells in the blood make antibodies against HIV. These antibodies bind to HIV, which marks it as a target for killing. The problem is that the immune system takes 3 to 4 years to develop effective antibodies against HIV. By this time, the numbers of immune cells reduce and the virus is already well spread in the body.

Now, scientists have identified a small antibody against HIV and named it C11. Since, this antibody is against the HIV virus subtype-C, it is particularly relevant for India.

Since a very long time scientists have been studying antibodies from patient samples to understand the proteins of HIV to design a good vaccine. A good vaccine is one that can generate effective antibodies against HIV.

Scientists at AIIMS in New Delhi have taken a step further in this direction. They collaborated with those at Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute in Haryana, YR Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education in Chennai, National Brain Research Centre in Haryana, and International AIDS Vaccine initiative in USA. The study was funded by the Indo-South Africa project of the Department of Science and Technology, India.  

They took blood cells from six patients of HIV who visited AIIMS, New Delhi and YR Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education, Chennai, for treatment. The blood samples were used to make a library of all virus-specific DNA sequences in the patient body.  Then some of these DNA sequences were used to make proteins that could bind to HIV virus. These proteins were small antibody fragments that could bind to HIV virus with high efficiency. 

Smaller fragments of antibodies could bind to the HIV proteins more effectively than full antibodies because they could reach to smaller and deeper areas in the cells for binding. These proteins can also be used for targeted drug delivery to HIV-infected cells in the future.

The new antibody C11 binds to the virus subtype-C. In other parts of the world, antibodies against subtype-A and B have been identified earlier. This is the first study that identifies an antibody against the virus subtype-C in India. “In the future, this can be used to design a vaccine that elicits a good antibody response. So far not much work has been done on isolating broad neutralizing antibodies against subtype-C infected patients, and India needs special attention to make antibodies for subtype-C virus”, say scientists.

C11 that binds to HIV with high efficiency will serve two main purposes. It will be used in passive immunotherapy and in designing vaccines against HIV.

Passive immunotherapy is useful in preventing HIV infection and in reducing virus numbers. Antibodies kill very low amounts of HIV virus in patients who have accidentally got pricked. In this manner, it prevents HIV infection. HIV patients with weak immunity are given antibodies that bind to HIV in the patient’s body thereby reducing virus load, which helps to slow down or block the spread of HIV.

Antibodies that bind to broad types of HIV proteins can be used to identify proteins for making anti-HIV vaccines in the future.  “We have successfully generated human anti-HIV cross neutralizing antibody fragments with distinct specificities from Indian infected donors that can serve as potential reagents for blocking HIV infection and designing effective vaccines in the future”, say scientists.

The research team included Lubina Khan, Rajesh Kumar, Ramachandran Thiruvengadam, Hilal Ahmad Parray, Muzamil Ashraf Makhdoomi, Sanjeev Kumar, Heena Aggarwal, Madhav Mohata, Abdul Wahid Hussain, Raksha Das, Raghavan Varadarajan, Jayanta Bhattacharya, Madhu Vajpayee, K. G. Murugavel, Suniti Solomon, Subrata Sinha, and Kalpana Luthra. 

This story was published by Biospectrum, Health Analytics India and IndiaScience Wire. 

Reference: Scientific Reports 7: 45163.

Scientists make better lubricants for steel machines

Lubricants are used in the industry to minimize friction, and wear and tear in the machinery. Indian scientists have made a new lubricant that shows a record low value of friction in sliding steel-steel interfaces.

The lubricant is made using polyethylene glycol 600. It is intercalated between layers of reduced graphene oxide sheets. These sheets have special chemical properties. They are attached to epoxy-hyroxyl chemical groups. The resulting product has a high lubrication capacity. When tested for its ability to reduce friction between layers of sliding steel, the lubricant showed record low values of friction. It reduces friction by increasing the chemical stability and mechanical strength of reduced graphene oxide sheet.

Researchers at the IndiraGandhi Centre for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, prepared this new lubricant. They collaborated with researchers from the Swiss Institute forDryland Environmental and Energy Research, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, and the University of Tokyo in Japan.

The new lubricant made using graphene sheets (green) and polyethylene glycol (orange) reduces the friction between steel surfaces.

“This study will certainly help to synthesise effective lubricant additives. We have shown a record low value of friction in graphene oxide blended lubricant sliding against steel-steel interfaces”, says Professor Niranjan Kumar at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam.

Scientists suggest another possible use of this new lubricant. The additive polyethylene glycol is already widely used in biomedical applications for reducing the friction and wear of knee joints. They say that the new lubricant can be a better material for this purpose.  However, this needs to be thoroughly investigated for safety.

 “This lubricant is easy to prepare and is a potential material for energy-efficient tribological applications in machine element”, say scientists Bhavana Gupta, Niranjan Kumar, Kalpataru Panda, Vigneshwaran Kanan, Shailesh Joshi, and Iris Visoly-Fisher. The findings are published in a recent issue of the journal Scientific Reports. 

Published- India Science Wire. 

Reference: Scientific Reports 7: 45030. 

New reusable material to mitigate water pollution by dyes

A new material could help mitigate the problem of textile dye-polluted water, suggests a recent report by scientists from the University of Delhi published in the international journal Applied Surface Science. 

The new material is a catalyst made by linking gold nanoparticles to a chemical substance called poly dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate (PDMAEMA). Because of PDMAEMA, gold nanoparticles align to form a worm-like structure.   Hence, the material is named as gold nanoworm. “PDMAEMA plays a very important role by capping gold nanoparticles for growth of nanoparticle into a worm like structure”, say scientists. The gold nanoworm is immobilized on a sheet of graphene oxide for structural support.

The material made of gold nanoworms could effectively degrade organic dyes like Rhodamine B, EosinY, and methyl orange into harmless products. Organic dyes are difficult to degrade owing to their ultra stable chemical structure.

India ranks second in the global textile manufacturing after China. The textile industries use dyes to impart colors to textiles. The unused dyes are discarded via drains that ultimately pollute groundwater and water bodies. This called for catalysts that can efficiently degrade organic dyes. It is preferred if they are reusable and environment-friendly.

The new material made of gold nanoworms can be reused atleast five times. “It is easy to use, highly efficient, recyclable, which make it suitable for applications in waste water management”, say scientists Navin Kumar Mogha, Saransh Gosain, and Dhanraj T Masram at the University of Delhi.

This catalyst could degrade more than 80% of the organic dyes in water in less than 100 seconds, which invigorates that it can be used to treat dye-polluted water in the future. 

Published- India Science Wire

Reference: Applied Surface Science 396: 1427–1434.

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