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Advancement in technology led to development of live attenuated Salmonella typhi Ty21a as enteric vector for expression of foreign proteins. Such vector platform is inevitable for development of vaccine candidate against human papilloma virus (HPV), the etiological agent of cervical cancer with high prevalence in developing nations. The high risk HPVs like type 16 and 18 contributes to 70% of cervical cancer, hence Indian Immunologicals Limited (IIL), Hyderabad, India developed a recombinant HPV vaccine by introducing HPV 16 and 18 L1 protein coding genes into attenuated S. typhi Ty21a vector. Being a genetically engineered enteric vector vaccine, it would be less expensive, with an ease of oral administration, instead of injectable that needs trained personale, is an added advantage for low socioeconomic setup compared to existing HPV vaccines. Establishing the nonclinical efficacy and safety/toxicity as per the national/international regulatory guidelines has become major constrain for such recombinant S. typhi HPV (rSt.HPV) vaccine. Since, the intended clinical mode of rSt.HPV is through oral route, whereas the live attenuated S. typhi Ty21a doesn't colonize in gut of laboratory animals to be used for nonclinical experiments. Hence, an alternate and unconventional method of ‘intranasal drug testing’, was followed for nonclinical efficacy and toxicity evaluations. An array of parameters specified by regulatory agencies were investigated in mice, rat and rabbits administered with rSt.HPV through, intra-peritoneal, intranasal and oral routes, the intended clinical route.•Current unconventional and innovative nonclinical testing procedures helps in exploring the alternate methods by pharmacologist/toxicologist.•Ultimately, such new drugs developed through technology must serve the humankind justifying the guidelines of regulatory agencies., Graphical abstract Image, graphical abstract

Azoles are prominent scaffolds in the pharmaceutical arena. In fact, medicinal properties of azole and benzazole containing compounds include anticancer, antimicrobial and antioxidant. Some of the drugs Inthomycin C, Oxaprozin, Tiazofurin, Dacarbazine, Tipifarnib, Albendazole, Febendazole, Omeprazole possess azole/benzazole moiety. Realizing the importance of azoles and benzazoles, it is planned to conjugate these two ligands as heteroaryl substituted urea derivatives and to study their antimicrobial activity. The results pertaining to these aspects will be discussed. © 2020 Author(s). The authors K. Narendra Babu and V. Padmavathi are grateful to CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), New Delhi for financial assistance under major research project.

MRKH (Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser) syndrome is a congenital abnormality seen in one out of 5,000 women characterized by the agenesis of the vagina, cervix, and uterus. It is also associated with kidney, bone and hearing difficulties. The ovaries are present with a normal function similar to that of a healthy reproductive woman’s by producing eggs and female hormones. Chromosomes are the normal 46xx female karyotype. We report this rare syndrome in a 26–year-old female where she had presented with complaints of absence of uterus with the absence of left kidney. She didn’t attain menarchy, secondary sexual characters are well developed. Small right ovarian follicular cyst with a rim of ovarian tissue was observed. She had undergone vaginoplasty.

This study evaluated the persistence of heavy metals, cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb) and mercury (Hg) in surficial marine sediments and their relationship with textural characteristics. Furthermore, heavy metal distribution was studied against organic carbon concentration within the sediments. Our results suggest that Cochin estuary is highly polluted in the case of all heavy metals (Pb of 29.48± 4.37µg/g, Cd of 0.21± 0.17µg/g and Hg of 0.17± 0.15µg/g). All the studied trace elements showed negative correlation with sand particles. However , significant positive correlations were observed between lead and mercury with silt and organic carbon (P

Objective To explore the effect of letrozole as an ovulation inducing agent on oocyte and embryo quality in mice model. Design Prospective study. Setting Institute of Reproductive Medicine, Kolkata, India. Animal(s) Sixty-nine sexually mature female Swiss Albino mice 6–7 weeks old. Intervention(s) Metaphase II (MII) oocytes from two groups of mice, one group injected with letrozole and the other with rFSH. Main Outcome Measure(s) Number of MII oocytes, number of oocytes with meiotic spindle (MS), different angles of MS relative to the polar body (PB), spindle characteristics, and fertilization outcome. Result(s) The MS was present in 84% and 71.2% of the oocytes in the letrozole and rFSH group, respectively. In the letrozole group, 73% of the oocytes had a 0° spindle position compared with 35.7% in the rFSH group. With letrozole, 19% of the oocytes had 0° > MS 90°, compared with 46.1% oocytes with 0° > MS 90° with rFSH. Mean spindle area retardance, spindle dimensions, and 4–8-cell embryo formation rate were significantly higher with letrozole compared with rFSH. Two-cell and blastocyst formation rates were similar in both groups. Conclusion(s) Robust birefringent spindles were obtained in mice on superovulation with letrozole. Letrozole does not appear to increase the risk of spindle assembly and preimplantation developmental arrest in mouse oocytes.

Ashtamudi estuary, situated on the southwest coast of India, is enormously affected by anthropogenic interventions. Physicochemical quality of water and sedimentological features of the estuary are evaluated during monsoon and nonmonsoon seasons to elucidate its quality variations and to link the same with existing environmental scenario. The whole data has been factorized using principal component analysis for extracting the total variability and linear relationships existing among a set of different physicochemical parameters of the backwater system. In PCA, high loadings were obtained for conductivity, salinity, fluoride, calcium, magnesium, sulfate, boron, and pH. The results were revealed that all the physicochemical processes depend upon seasonal fluctuation of freshwater input and seawater intrusion. Wide spatial concentration fluctuations of organic carbon and iron in bottom sediment have been noticed and both constituents reveal good correlation with sediment texture. The results showed high deterioration of the physicochemical quality of water during nonmonsoon season with respect to monsoon season.

This study evaluated the relationship between the traditional indicators of faecal pollution, total coliforms (TC), faecal coliforms (FC) and Faecalstreptococci (FS), and the presence of few potentially pathogenic enteric bacteria, Vibrio cholerae (VC), Vibrio parahaemolyticus (VP), Shigella spp. (SH) and Salmonella spp. (SL) in coastal sea water. The distributional statuses of these bacteria were also studied along the Southern Kerala coast. Cluster analyses were done to identify similar groups of indicator as well as enteric pathogenic bacteria. Kochi was found to be highly polluted with enteric pathogens and indicator bacteria (TC of 4700, VC of 820, FC of 920 and FS of 410 CFU ml(-1)). Percentage incidence of VC (97.42%) was comparatively higher than the traditional indicator bacteria (TC 95.04%, FC of 63.64% and FS of 47.64%). VC found to be rather stable and showed significant relationship with all the traditional indicator bacteria (R20.370), suggests that both quantitatively and qualitatively the abundance of Vibrio cholerae can determine faecal pollution, could be used as a faecal pollution indicator bacterium, especially in the marine environment where traditional indicator bacteria failed to survive. It would be advisable to always perform the detection of SH and VP beside the traditional indicators as no significant relationship (R2or =0.076, p0.05) exists among them.