No abstract

After the serendipitous discovery of cisplatin, a platinum-based drug with chemotherapeutic effects, an incredible amount of research in the area of coordination chemistry has been produced. Other transition metal compounds were studied, and several new relevant metallodrugs have been synthetized in the past few years. This review is focused on coordination compounds with first-row transition metals, namely, copper, cobalt, nickel or manganese, or with zinc, which have potential or effective pharmacological properties. It is known that metal complexes, once bound to organic drugs, can enhance the drugs’ biological activities, such as anticancer, antimicrobial or anti-inflammatory ones. NSAIDs are a class of compounds with anti-inflammatory properties used to treat pain or fever. NSAIDs’ properties can be strongly improved when included in complexes using their compositional N and O donor atoms, which facilitate their coordination to metal ions. This review focuses on the research on this topic and on the promising or effective results that complexes of first-row transition metals and NSAIDs can exhibit.

Fungi colonizing soil and organic pollutants often meet. The consequences of this encounter constitute an outstanding question.

Background Organic pollutants are omnipresent and can penetrate all environmental niches. We evaluated the hypothesis that short-term (acute) exposure to aromatic hydrocarbon pollutants could increase the potential for fungal virulence. We analysed whether pentachlorophenol and triclosan pollution results in the production of airborne fungal spores with greater virulence than those derived from an unpolluted (Control) condition. Results Each pollutant altered the composition of the community of airborne spores, favouring an increase in strains with higher in vivo infection capacity (wax moth Galleria mellonella used as infection model). Fungi subsisting inside larvae, 72h post-infection and arising from either airborne spore-inoculum, exhibited comparable diversity (mainly within Aspergillus fumigatus). Several virulent Aspergillus strains were isolated from larvae infected with the airborne spores produced in a polluted environment. Meanwhile, strains isolated from the control, including one A. fumigatus strain, showed no virulence. Potential pathogenicity increased when two Aspergillus spp. virulent strains were assembled, suggesting the existence of synergisms that impact pathogenicity. None of the observed taxonomic or functional traits could separate the virulent from the avirulent strains. Conclusions Our study emphasises pollution-stress as a possible driver of phenotypic adaptations that increase Aspergillus spp. pathogenicity as well as the need to better understand the interplay between pollution and fungal virulence.

Towards the end of 2019 in Wuhan, suspicions of a new dangerous virus circulating in the air began to arise. It was the start of the world pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Since then, considerable research data and review papers about this virus have been published. Hundreds of researchers have shared their work in order to achieve a better comprehension of this disease, all with the common goal of overcoming this pandemic. The coronavirus is structurally similar to influenza A. Both are RNA viruses and normally associated with comparable infection symptoms. In this review, different case studies targeting polymeric materials were appraised to highlight them as an indispensable tool to fight these RNA viruses. In particular, the main focus was how polymeric materials, and their versatile features could be applied in different stages of viral disease, i.e., in protection, detection and treatment.