Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) and its homologue, ACE2, are commonly allied with hypertension, renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system pathway, and other cardiovascular system disorders. The recent pandemic of COVID-19 has attracted the attention of numerous researchers on ACE2 receptors, where the causative viral particle, SARS-CoV-2, is established to exploit these receptors for permitting their entry into the human cells. Therefore, studies on the molecular origin and pathophysiology of the cell response in correlation to the role of ACE2 receptors to these viruses are bringing novel theories. The varying level of manifestation and importance of ACE proteins, underlying irregularities and disorders, intake of specific medications, and persistence of assured genomic variants at the ACE genes are potential questions raising nowadays while observing the marked alteration in response to the SARS-CoV-2-infected patients. Therefore, the present review has focused on several raised opinions associated with the role of the ACE2 receptor and its impact on COVID-19 pathogenesis.
to sudden increase in the number of herbal drug manufactures Herbal medicines as the major remedy in traditional system of medicine have been used in medical practices since antiquity. The practices continue today because of its biomedical benefits as well as place in cultural beliefs in many parts of world and have made a great contribution towards maintaining human health. [1] India is sitting on a gold mine of well-recorded and well practiced knowledge of traditional herbal medicine. But, unlike China, India has not been able to capitalize on this herbal wealth by promoting its use in the developed world despite their renewed interest in herbal medicines. This can be achieved by judicious product identification based on diseases found in the developed world for which no medicine or only palliative therapy is available; such herbal medicines will find speedy access into those countries. Backward integration from market demands will pay rich dividends. Strategically, India should enter through those plant-based medicines which are already well accepted in Europe, USA and Japan. Simultaneously, it should identify those herbs (medicinal plants) which are time-tested and dispensed all over in India. [2] Camphor is a natural product derived from the wood of the camphor laurel (Cinnamomum camphora L.) trees through steam distillation and purification by sublimination; the
Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT or ‘sleeping sickness’) is a neglected tropical disease. If untreated, it is always fatal and leads to death. A few treatments are available for HAT, but most of them require a skilled professional, which increases the financial burden on the patient. Recently, fexinidazole (FEX) has been approved by the European Medicine Agency (EMA) and the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) as the first all-oral therapy for the treatment of stage-1 (hemolymphatic) as well as stage-2 (meningoencephalitic) of HAT. Before the FEX approval, there were separate treatments for stage-1 and stage-2 of HAT. This study reviews the discovery, development timeline, inventions, and patent literature of FEX. It was first approved by EMA and USFDA in 2018 and 2021, respectively. FEX was also added to the World Health Organization’s list of essential drugs in 2019. The patent literature search revealed many types of patents/patent applications (compound, salt, process, method of treatment, drug combinations, and compositions) related to FEX, which have been summarized in this article. The authors foresee a great scope to develop more inventions based on FEX (novel salts, polymorphs, drug conjugates, cyclodextrin complex, etc.) for the treatment of many protozoal diseases (Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease), inflammatory diseases, and other microbial infections. New combinations of FEX with other treatments of HAT may also provide fruitful results. This review might be useful to the scientists working on the HAT and other neglected diseases to develop novel inventions and innovations of therapeutic relevance.
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