A biosensor can be defined as a compact analytical device or unit incorporating a biological or biologically derived sensitive recognition element immobilized on a physicochemical transducer to measure one or more analytes. Microfluidic systems, on the other hand, provide throughput processing, enhance transport for controlling the flow conditions, increase the mixing rate of different reagents, reduce sample and reagents volume (down to nanoliter), increase sensitivity of detection, and utilize the same platform for both sample preparation and detection. In view of these advantages, the integration of microfluidic and biosensor technologies provides the ability to merge chemical and biological components into a single platform and offers new opportunities for future biosensing applications including portability, disposability, real-time detection, unprecedented accuracies, and simultaneous analysis of different analytes in a single device. This review aims at representing advances and achievements in the field of microfluidic-based biosensing. The review also presents examples extracted from the literature to demonstrate the advantages of merging microfluidic and biosensing technologies and illustrate the versatility that such integration promises in the future biosensing for emerging areas of biological engineering, biomedical studies, point-of-care diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and precision agriculture.

Human microbiota aredistinctcommunities of microorganisms that resides at different body niches. Exploration of the human microbiome has become a reality due to the availability of powerful metagenomics and metatranscriptomic analysis technologies. Recent advances in sequencing and bioinformatics over the past decade help providea deep insight into the nature of the host-microbial interactions and identification of potential deriver genes and pathways associated with human health, well-being, and predisposition to different diseases.In the present review, we outline recent studies devoted to elucidate the possible link between the microbiota and various type of diseases. The present review also highlights the potential utilization of microbiota as a potential therapeutic option to treat a wide array of human diseases. This article is

Research is defined as the systematic inquiry in order to reach new conclusions or to confirm earlier findings. The research design plays a critical role in the validity of the collected data and its analysis and thus, the main findings of the research problem. This review article compares between two research designs; field research and controlled laboratory research. Whilst field research offers contextual data on settings, interactions, or individuals, controlled laboratory research is basic, repeatable, and efficient type of research that can be applied across a variety of disciplines.

Recognized as information intensive, healthcare requires timely, accurate information from many different sources generated by health information systems (HIS). With the availability of information technology in today's world and its integration in healthcare systems; the term “Public Health Informatics (PHI)” was coined and used. The main focus of PHI is the use of information science and technology for promoting population health rather than of individuals. PHI has a disease prevention rather than treatment focus in order to prevent chain of events or disease spread. Moreover, PHI often operates at the level of government rather than at the private sector. This review article provides an overview of the field of PHI and compares between paper based surveillance system and Public Health Information Networks (PHIN). The current trends and future challenges of applying PHI systems in KSA were also reported.

Abstract:The synthesis of new 3-cyano-2-substituted pyridines bearing various pharmacophores and functionalities at position 2 is described. The synthesized compounds were evaluated for their in vitro anti-cancer activities on five cancer cell lines using 5-FU as reference compound. The results revealed that the benzohydrazide derivative 9a induced growth inhibition in human breast cancer cell line MCF-7 with an IC 50 value of 2 µM and it showed lower cytotoxicity on MCF-12a normal breast epithelial cells. Additionally, 9a induced apoptotic morphological changes and induced apoptosis in MCF-7 in a dose and time-dependent manner according to an enzyme linked immunosorbent apoptosis assay which is further confirmed by a TUNEL assay. Flow cytometric analysis indicated that 9a arrested MCF-7 cells in the G1 phase, which was further confirmed by increased expression of p21 and p27 and reduced expression of CDK2 and CDK4. Western blot data revealed significant upregulation of the expression of p53, Bax, caspase-3 and down-regulation of Bcl-2, Mdm-2 and Akt. Additionally, 9a increased the release of cytochrome c from mitochondria to cytoplasm which provokes the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway while it showed no significant change on the expression of the death receptor proteins procaspase-8, caspase-8 and FAS. Furthermore, 9a reduced the expression of phospho AKT and β-catenin in dose dependent manner while inhibiting the expression of migration-related genes such as matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Our findings suggest that compound 9a could be considered as a lead structure for further development of more potent apoptosis inducing agents with anti-metastatic activities.