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Cardiovascular disease has reached a mortality rate of 470,000 patients each year. Myocardial infarction accounts for 49.2% of these deaths, and the cTnI protein is a crucial target in diagnosing myocardial infarction. A peptide-based bioreceptor design using a computational approach is a good candidate to be developed for a rapid, effective, and selective detection method for cTnI although it is still lacking in study. Hence, to address the scientific gap, we develop a new candidate peptide for the cTnI biosensor by bioinformatics method and present new computational approaches. The sequential point mutations were made to the selected peptide to increase its stability and affinity for cTnI. Next, molecular docking was performed to select the mutated peptide, and one of the best results was subjected to the molecular dynamics simulation. Finally, the results showed that the best peptide showed the lowest affinity and good stability among other mutated peptide designs for interacting with the cTnI protein. In addition, the peptide has been tested to have a higher specificity towards cTnI than its major isomer, sTnI, through molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation. Therefore, the peptide is considered a good potential bioreceptor for diagnosing myocardial infarction diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

β-carotene is a potent lipophilic nutraceutical which has low bioaccessibility and bioavailability caused by poor water solubility, stability, sensitivity to light, temperature and pH. Nano-encapsulation can protect it from degradation and retain a compound's functional property . The aim of this study is to characterize the β- carotene from Daucus carota root which is nano-encapsulated with the chitosan matrix with TPP. β-carotene was isolated from Daucus carota root origin from local vegetable plantations, Palembang, Indonesia. Then, it was encapsulated by entrapping it with a chitosan-TPP solution using inclusion complexation method with variants 0.1%, 0.25%, and 0.5%, followed by β-carotene. Size and morphology of β-carotene were analyzed using particle size analyser (PSA) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Results showed that the particle size of the encapsulation of the chitosan increases as long as the β-carotene concentration. Only the variant 0.5% detects the level of β-carotene as much as 0.03 mg/kg. β-carotene encapsulated with chitosan-TPP appear in a spherical shape with a size of 20 nm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to identify the effect of mechanical milling on the total phenolic content and antioxidant activity of mangosteen pericarp. Mangosteen pericarp was milled under different milling times (30, 90, 150, and 210 min). The particle morphology before and after milling was observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and the average particle size was obtained from SEM images and analyzed statistically. The antioxidant activity was measured through the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl method. The total phenolic content for the non-milling sample was 14.52 × 104 µg GAE/g sample, and the highest total phenol content was 17.44 × 104 µg GAE/g sample for the sample milled for 210 min. The IC50 value decreased for samples with milling 150 and 210 min, which showed strong antioxidant activity, whereas the value of gallic acid equivalent increased. SEM observations showed the presence of agglomeration in the morphology of mangosteen pericarp samples. The average particle size of the mangosteen pericarp decreased as the milling time increased (up to 4499 nm for samples milled for 210 min). Therefore, mechanical milling had a significant effect on the phenolic content and antioxidant activity, which indicated an increase in the bioavailability of mangosteen pericarp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a disease caused by insulin resistance. Many types of oral medications exist, but the effectiveness and side effects differ from patient to patient, so alternative drugs are still required. One compound group receiving much scientific interest regarding its antidiabetic potential is xanthones as potential alpha-glucosidase and alpha-amylase inhibitors. This study performed molecular docking simulations on all 515 natural xanthones with alpha-glucosidase and alpha-amylase as the protein targets. We found 31 unique ligands that comply, and the three best ligands per protein target were filtered based on how many active site residues the ligands interacted with the targets. The three best alpha-glucosidase inhibitors are 3,4,5,8-tetrahydroxy-1,2-diisoprenylxanthone, Polygalaxanthone V, and Polygalaxanthone VII. As for alpha-amylase, we found 1-O-primeverosyl-3,8-dihydroxy-5-methoxyxanthone, Garcimangosone C, and Mangostinone as the best inhibitors. The six chosen and standard ligands underwent 2 ns molecular dynamics simulations. Both standard ligands had the highest interaction energies, followed by complexes with glycosylated xanthones, and prenylated xanthones. We also found that the prenylated xanthones could retain their initial protein-ligand interactions. Therefore, this is the first study that revealed prenylated xanthones have a good potential as antitype 2 diabetes mellitus agents among other xanthones groups through in silico method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades, nanomedicine has played an important role in the enhancement of therapeutic outcomes compared to those of conventional therapy. At the same time, nanoparticle drug delivery systems offer a significant reduction in side effects of treatments by lowering the off-target biodistribution of the active pharmaceutical ingredients. Cancer nanomedicine represents the most extensively studied nanotechnology application in the field of pharmaceutics and pharmacology since the first nanodrug for cancer treatment, liposomal doxorubicin (Doxil ® ), has been approved by the FDA. The advancement of cancer nanomedicine and its enormous technological success also included various other target diseases, including hepatic fibrosis. This confirms the versatility of nanomedicine for improving therapeutic activity. In this review, we summarize recent updates of nanomedicine platforms for improving therapeutic efficacy regarding liver fibrosis. We first emphasize the challenges of conventional drugs for penetrating the biological barriers of the liver. After that, we highlight design principles of nanocarriers for achieving improved drug delivery of antifibrosis drugs through passive and active targeting strategies., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024, Setyawati et al.)

Cirrhosis naturally progresses through three stages: compensated, decompensated, and late decompensated, which carry an elevated risk of death. Although curcumin's anti-cirrhosis effects have been studied, underlying mechanism in preventing cirrhosis progression and the correlation between curcumin's action with upregulated genes remains insufficiently explored. In this study, we employed network pharmacology approach to construct a drug-target-disease network through bioinformatics and validate the findings with molecular docking and dynamic simulation. The curcumin-targeted liver cirrhosis network encompassed 54 nodes with 282 edges in protein-protein interactions (PPI) network. By utilizing network centrality analysis, we identified eight crucial genes. KEGG enrichment pathway revealed that these crucial genes are involved in pathway of cancer, endocrine resistance, estrogen signaling, chemical carcinogenesis-receptor activation, lipid metabolism, and atherosclerosis. Notably, these eight genes predominantly participate in cancer-related pathways. Further investigation revealed upregulation of four genes and downregulation of four others in hepatocellular carcinoma patients. These upregulated genes-MAPK8, SRC, PPARG, and HSP90AA1-strongly correlated with reduced survival probability in liver hepatocellular carcinoma patients with survival times approximately under 4000 days (∼11 years). Molecular docking and molecular dynamic results exhibited curcumin's superior binding affinities and stability compared to native ligands of MAPK8, SRC, PPARG, and HSP90AA1 within 50 ns simulations. Moreover, MM-GBSA analysis showed stronger binding energy of curcumin to MAPK8, SRC, and HSP90AA1 than native ligand. In conclusion, this study provides valuable insights into curcumin's potential mechanisms in preventing liver cirrhosis progression, specifically in HCC. These findings offer a theoretical basis for further pharmacological research into anti-HCC effect of curcumin.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.