Design and development of effective anti-virals in combating CoVid-19 is a great challenge worldwide. Known drugs such as chloroquine, lopinavir, favipiravir and remdesivir are used in the management of CoVid - 19. It is known that Ivermectin and remdesivir both are effective against filoviruses, paramyxo viruses. Available data also shows that ivermectin and remedesivir repress the replication of SARS-CoV-2. Thus, we document the potential use of ivermectin and remdesivir in the management of CoVid -19.
It is of interest to study the cytotoxicity of silibinin assisted silver nanoparticles in human colorectal (HT-29) cancer cells. Silver nanoparticles were synthesized using silibinin as a reducing agent. The synthesized silibinin assisted silver nanoparticles ( SSNPs) were characterized and analyzed using a transmission electron microscope and spectrophotometer. The SSNPs synthesized in this study are spherical and their size ranges from 10 to 80 nm. HT-29 cells were treated with different concentrations (2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 ng/mL) of SSNPs and cytotoxicity was evaluated. The apoptosis was using flow cytometry. p53 protein expression using western blot. SSNPs are induced a decrease in viability and increased concentration-dependent cytotoxicity in HT-29 cells. SSNPs treatment also caused apoptosis-related morphological changes. SSNPs treatments at 8 and 16 ng/ml showed a prominent apoptotic change i.e., 70.3% and 83.6% respectively, and decreased viability of HT-29 cells 20% and 11.2% respectively as compared to control cells. SSNPs treatments induced p53 expression in HT-29 cells. Data shows that SSNPs have the potential to induce apoptosis in colorectal cancer cells. This provides insights for the further evaluation of SSNPs in fighting colon cancer.
Astaxanthin (AXN) is known to have health benefits by epidemiological studies. Therefore, it is of interest to assess the effect of AXN (derived from indigenous unicellular green alga Haematococcus lacustris) to modulate cell cycle arrest, lysosomal acidification and eventually apoptosis using in vitro in A549 lung cancer cells. Natural extracts of astaxanthin were obtained by standardized methods as reported earlier and characterized by standard HPLC and MS. Treatment of A549 cells with AXN (purified fraction) showed significant reduction in cell viability (about 50%) as compared to crude extract at 50µM concentration. Thus, we show the anticancer effects and lysosomal acidification in A549 cells by Astaxanthin from Haematococcus lacustris for further consideration. Together, our results demonstrated the anticancer potential of AXN from Haematococcus lacustris, which is found to be mediated via its ability to induce cell cycle arrest, lysosomal acidification and apoptotic induction.