Bacterial resistance and antibiotic drug effectiveness can be related to administering generic products with a subtherapeutic dose or poor in vivo drug release. The aim of this study was to investigate whether locally marketed amoxicillin tablets have the required chemical and physical attributes, including in vitro bioequivalence performance. Five generic products (T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5) containing combination of amoxicillin trihydrate and potassium clavulanate as 1 g strength present in immediate release tablets were compared to the reference listed drug product Augmentin® (R) for weight variation, friability, resistance to crushing, and chemical content of amoxicillin. Difference (f1) and similarity (f2) factors were calculated to assess in vitro bioequivalence requirements. The tablets from different products have shown compliance with the pharmacopeial requirements of the performed tests. The measured resistance to crushing of tablets did not influence the dissolution time. Three generic products released more than 85% of amoxicillin by the first 15 min as did the reference product and were considered as bioequivalent products. T1 and T4 had f1 values of 16.5% and 25.4% respectively and their f2 values were 44.5 and 34.6 respectively, indicating failure to meet in vitro bioequivalence requirements. Tablet formulations can play an important role in achieving bioequivalence. Independent investigations such as this study serve as an important tool to reveal possible inferior or noncompliant products that may find their way to the market.

Background: View to its interesting role in the peptidoglycan biosynthesis pathway the enzyme UDP-N- acetylglucosamine enolpyruvyl transferase is an attractive target to develop new antibacterial agents, it catalyzes the first key step of this pathway and its inhibition leads to the bacterial cell death. Fosfomycin is known as the natural inhibitor of MurA. Objective: Call new inhibitors of MurA by virtual screening of different chemical compounds libraries, and test the best scored “virtual hits” against three pathogenic bacteria: Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, and Staphylococcus aureus. Methods: A Virtual screening of the structural analogues of fosfomycin downloaded from PubChem database was performed on one side and of the French National Chemical Library as well as using ZINC database to identify new structures different from fosfomycin on the other, FlexX was the software used for this study. The antibacterial testing was divided into methods: disk diffusion and broth dilution. Results: A set of virtual hits was found with better energy score than that of fosfomycin, seven between them were tested in vitro. Therefore, disk diffusion method explored four compounds exhibited antibacterial activity: CID-21680357 (fosfomycin analogue), AB-00005001, ZINC04658565, and ZINC901335. The testing was continued by broth dilution method for both compounds CID-21680357 and ZINC901335 to determine their minimum inhibitory concentrations, and ZINC901335 had the best value with 457µg/ml against Staphylococcus aureus. Conclusion: Four compounds were found and proven in silico and in vitro to have antibacterial activity: CID-21680357, AB-00005001, ZINC04658565, and ZINC901335.

The need for new antibacterial agents is increasingly becoming of great importance as bacterial resistance to current drugs is quickly spreading. Enoyl‐acyl carrier protein reductases (FabI) are important enzymes for fatty acid biosynthesis in bacteria and other micro‐organisms. In this project, we conducted structure‐based virtual screening against the FabI enzyme, and accordingly, 37 compounds were selected for experimental testing. Interestingly, five compounds were able to demonstrate antimicrobial effect with variable inhibition activity against various strains of bacteria and fungi. Minimum inhibitory concentrations of the active compounds were determined and showed to be in low to medium micromolar range. Subsequently, enzyme inhibition assay was carried out for our five antimicrobial hits to confirm their biological target and determine their IC50 values. Three of these tested compounds exhibited inhibition activity for the FabI enzyme where our best hit MN02 had an IC50 value of 7.8 μM. Furthermore, MN02 is a small bisphenolic compound that is predicted to have all required features to firmly bind with the target enzyme. To sum up, hits discovered in this work can act as a good starting point for the future development of new and potent antimicrobial agents.

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Objective: To investigate whether particular courses in modern pharmacy curriculum equips enrolled students with knowledge/skills to differentiate between different claims of weight loss products. Methods: Claims from weight loss products in UAE market were identified and classified to three categories: indicating safety, indicating effectiveness or indicating convenience. They were assessed in a structured survey for the level of persuasion to undergraduate BSc Pharmacy students (n=199) in the College of Pharmacy (CP) in comparison to other undergraduate students (n= 44) from the College of Education (CE) in a University located at Al Ain city, UAE to adopt or recommend the product to their friends. The effect of the particular courses, namely Drug Information and Literature Evaluation (DI) and/or Research Skills (RS), on the level of persuasion was investigated. Results: A trend showing more CP students favoring the different statements was noted particularly if the drug was approved by the FDA (95% confidence interval (CI) 49.9%-63.7%) and being a prescription drug (95% CI 57.6%-71.0%). Moreover, CP students were more distinctive in favoring the different statements, however students' enrollment in DI and/or RS courses did not demonstrate tangible effect. Conclusion: DI and RS that teach pharmacy students to be conservative in accepting claims failed to yield the expected results. DI course should tackle practical issues such as the one in this study. The integrated didactic courses with experiential components that focus on wellness may also offer an alternative or additional solution. Future similar studies should focus on students exiting the pharmacy program to eliminate some confounding factors.