Cancer is a serious concern at present. A large number of patients die each year due to cancer illnesses in spite of several interventions available. Development of an effective and side effects lacking anticancer therapy is the trending research direction in healthcare pharmacy. Chemical entities present in plants proved to be very potential in this regard. Bioactive phytochemicals are preferential as they pretend differentially on cancer cells only, without altering normal cells. Carcinogenesis is a complex process and includes multiple signaling events. Phytochemicals are pleiotropic in their function and target these events in multiple manners; hence they are most suitable candidate for anticancer drug development. Efforts are in progress to develop lead candidates from phytochemicals those can block or retard the growth of cancer without any side effect. Several phytochemicals manifest anticancer function in vitro and in vivo. This article deals with these lead phytomolecules with their action mechanisms on nuclear and cellular factors involved in carcinogenesis. Additionally, druggability parameters and clinical development of anticancer phytomolecules have also been discussed.

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The pandemic of viral diseases during recent years has forced the scientific community to investigate less toxic antiviral phytomolecules instead of using nucleic acid analogues, protease inhibitors or other toxic synthetic molecules as antiviral therapeutics. Plants and many of their secondary metabolites because of the healing properties have been in traditional use throughout the world since ancient times. They provide us diverse bioactive phytochemicals which play synergetic role in maintaining human health. The development of clinical products from phyto-pharmaceuticals is a trending approach to look for ecofriendly therapeutic molecules. More than 50% of drugs used in Western nations are derived from plants or their constituents. Many plants have significant antiviral properties too. Very little information is available about plants of antiviral significance. This article briefly reviews various phytochemicals/bioactive molecules which have been isolated from plants and possess antiviral constituents, their mode of action and potential applications in treating/preventing viral diseases.

Cancer is an increasing cause of mortality and morbidity throughout the world. L-methionase has potential application against many types of cancers. L-Methionase is an intracellular enzyme in bacterial species, an extracellular enzyme in fungi, and absent in mammals. L-Methionase producing bacterial strain(s) can be isolated by 5,5′-dithio-bis-(2-nitrobenzoic acid) as a screening dye. L-Methionine plays an important role in tumour cells. These cells become methionine dependent and eventually follow apoptosis due to methionine limitation in cancer cells. L-Methionine also plays an indispensable role in gene activation and inactivation due to hypermethylation and/or hypomethylation. Membrane transporters such as GLUT1 and ion channels like Na2+, Ca2+, K+, and Cl− become overexpressed. Further, the α-subunit of ATP synthase plays a role in cancer cells growth and development by providing them enhanced nutritional requirements. Currently, selenomethionine is also used as a prodrug in cancer therapy along with enzyme methionase that converts prodrug into active toxic chemical(s) that causes death of cancerous cells/tissue. More recently, fusion protein (FP) consisting of L-methionase linked to annexin-V has been used in cancer therapy. The fusion proteins have advantage that they have specificity only for cancer cells and do not harm the normal cells.

The humans worldwide are facing obesity as a major clinical threat because it is linked with cardiovascular diseases which often have serious consequences. Treatments available for body weight loss do not produce permanent weight loss and they often bear some side effects. To achieve safer antiobesetic therapeutics, researchers are moving towards plant-based therapeutic formulations. Many phytomolecules have been identified as anti-lipolytic functions but none of them have reached up to the clinical level. So there is an essential need to develop effective anti-obesetic medications which not only produce sufficient weight loss but also lack side effects. Plants may prove promising option for the same. In this article, medications and surgical procedures have been reviewed and dealt for weight loss and the role of phytomolecules in anti-obesetic therapeutics has been explored.

A new bacterial strain producing extracellular cholesterol oxidase (ChOx) was isolated and identified as Castellaniella sp. COX. The ChOx was purified by salting‐out and ion‐exchange chromatography up to 10.4‐fold, with a specific activity of 15 U/mg with a molecular mass of 59 kDa. The purified ChOx exhibited pH 8.0 and temperature 40°C for its optimum activity. The enzyme showed stability over a wide pH range and was most stable at pH value 7.0, and at pH 8.0, it retained almost 86% of its initial activity after 3 h of incubation at 37°C. The enzyme possessed a half‐life of 8 h at 37°C, 7 h at 40°C, and 3 h at 50°C. A Lineweaver–Burk plot was calibrated to determine its Km (0.16 mM) and Vmax (18.7 μmol·mg−1·min−1). The ChOx activity was enhanced with Ca2+, Mg2+, and Mn2+ while it was inhibited by Hg2+, Ba2+, Fe2+, Cu2+, and Zn2+ ions. Organic solvents like acetone, n‐butanol, toluene, dimethyl sulfoxide, chloroform, benzene, and methanol were well tolerated by the enzyme while iso‐propanol and ethanol were found to enhance the activity of purified ChOx. ChOx induced cytotoxicity with an IC50 value of 1.78 and 1.88 U/ml against human RD and U87MG established cell lines, respectively, while broadly sparing the normal human cells.

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