Recent outbreaks of highly pathogenic and occasional drug-resistant influenza strains have highlighted the need to develop novel anti-influenza therapeutics. Here, we report computational and experimental efforts to identify influenza neuraminidase inhibitors from among the 3000 natural compounds in the Malaysian-Plants Natural-Product (NADI) database. These 3000 compounds were first docked into the neuraminidase active site. The five plants with the largest number of top predicted ligands were selected for experimental evaluation. Twelve specific compounds isolated from these five plants were shown to inhibit neuraminidase, including two compounds with IC50 values less than 92 μM. Furthermore, four of the 12 isolated compounds had also been identified in the top 100 compounds from the virtual screen. Together, these results suggest an effective new approach for identifying bioactive plant species that will further the identification of new pharmacologically active compounds from diverse natural-product resources.

The quest in the "Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Which Chiral Drug Is the Fairest of Them All?" escape room activity was to find an enantiomer drug that cures a "sleeping sickness". Based loosely on the story of Snow White, first-year pharmacy student pairs had 50 min to solve gamified stereochemistry quizzes (tasks 1−4), collect four letter clues to unlock the final puzzle, and escape the lab. The escape room activity was held after a synchronous instructor-led lab briefing. Guided by the revised Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, the synchronous practical session leveraged a combination of three online platforms: Miro Board, Quizizz, and Google Forms in the Cisco Webex virtual environment. The Cisco Webex's breakout room feature helped facilitate teamwork and communication during the escape room game. Students' responses during the debriefing session indicated enhanced students' interactions and remote learning experiences throughout the virtual stereochemistry practical during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: The pharmacy profession has evolved tremendously, assuming important roles in patient care and often working in multidisciplinary healthcare teams. Educational escape rooms are team-based games delivered in active learning environments that address educational objectives by developing necessary competencies and skills for future pharmacists.   Methods: This narrative review synthesises current practices and outcomes of educational escape rooms in pharmacy education with the primary aim of helping educators in developing and implementing escape room games. A database search of Web of Knowledge, Scopus, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar identified 1,057 studies.     Results:  After article screening, twenty studies were included. The majority of the studies (85%) reported the development of escape room games for pharmacy practice and professional development.     Conclusion:  Educational escape rooms were positively perceived by students, enhancing knowledge and serving as a platform to foster teamwork, communication, and problem-solving skills while applying clinical skills deemed essential in producing competent pharmacists in the 21st century.

We have previously reported the antioxidant and neuroprotective activities of the aqueous extract of four varieties of Ficus deltoidea (Fd) (Moraceae) namely var kunstleri (Fdvk), var angustifolia (Fdva), var deltoidea (Fdvd) and var intermedia (Fdvi). In this study, flavonoid constituents in aqueous leaf and fig extracts of the four varieties were analyzed and characterized using liquid chromatography mass spectrometer quadrupole-time of flight (LCMS-Q-TOF) via hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) technique. The HCA dendrogram revealed that the abundant flavonoids among the eight samples are epicatechin, quercetin-3-rutinoside, quercetin 5,4'-di-O-beta-D-glucopyranoside, myricetin and naringenin. The study found that the distribution of the flavonoids differed between the four varieties and varied within the plant parts. To date, the flavonoid distribution of the different plant parts of the four varieties has not been documented. A positive correlation was observed between flavonoid constituents present and radical scavenging activities of the aqueous extracts.

The selectins are a family of cell-adhesion proteins that mediate the early stages of leukocyte recruitment from the blood stream to sites of tissue damage through recognition of the carbohydrate epitope sialyl Lewis(x) (sLe(x)). Current development of small molecule based inhibitors of this process and their clinical potential to address numerous acute and chronic diseases are explored.