Insulin has captured researchers' attention worldwide. There is a rapid global rise in the number of diabetic patients, which increases the demand for insulin. Current methods of insulin production are expensive and time-consuming. A PCR-based strategy was employed for the cloning and verification of human insulin. The human insulin protein was then overexpressed in E. coli on a laboratory scale. Thereafter, optimisation of human insulin expression was conducted. The yield of human insulin produced was approximately 520.92 (mg/L), located in the intracellular fraction. Human insulin was detected using the MALDI-TOF-MS and LC-MS methods. The crude biosynthesised protein sequence was verified using protein sequencing, which had a 100% similarity to the human insulin sequence. The biological activity of human insulin was tested in vitro using a MTT assay, which revealed that the crude biosynthesised human insulin displayed a similar degree of efficacy to the standard human insulin. This study eliminated the use of affinity tags since an untagged pET21b expression vector was employed. Tedious protein renaturation, inclusion body recovery steps, and the expensive enzymatic cleavage of the C-peptide of insulin were eliminated, thereby making this method of biosynthesising human insulin a novel and more efficient method.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented surge in the demand for alcohol-based hand sanitisers (ABHS). The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organisation (WHO) recommend alcohol, i.e., isopropanol or ethanol, at a 60-95% concentration in ABHS for sufficient antiviral protection. Consumers need to be vigilant of substandard hand sanitisers being marketed to the public. The frequent exposure of microorganisms to alcohol concentrations below the recommended range for infection prevention may lead to resistant mutations, and above the range may be ineffective. Therefore, this study aimed to verify the stated alcohol content in hand sanitisers from their respective labels. We analysed 50 hand sanitiser samples available to our region in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, using a Shimadzu GC-MS-QP2010 Ultra equipped with a Zebron ZB-wax capillary column. The hand sanitisers analysed had a range of 44-93% alcohol content. The data from our study also revealed that 32% (16) of hand sanitisers did not adhere to the stated alcohol indicated on their labels. 16% (8) contained >80% and 12% (6) contained <60%, while 6% (3) of the ABHS contained 1-propanol and ethyl acetate as contaminants, respectively. This study clearly emphasises manufacturers' exploitation of the pandemic and the need for stricter guidelines and regulations for consistency amongst ABHS manufacturers. The public should also be more alert to the % alcohol stated (ideal range 60-80%) on the sanitizer bottle and note one needs to rub their hands together until it feels dry. Keywords: alcohol-content, ethanol, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, hand sanitiser, 2-propanol (isopropanol)

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The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has placed severe constraints on healthcare systems around the globe. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has caused upheaval in the healthcare and economic sectors worldwide. On the 20th of May 2020, the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global pandemic due to the unprecedented number of cases reported around the globe. As of the 4th of November 2022, there were 637,117,429 coronavirus cases reported globally by Worldometer stats, with 6,602,572 related deaths. In South Africa, there were approximately 4,029,496 coronavirus cases and 102,311 associated deaths. As such, there is a need for efficacious therapeutic regimes. There has been a paucity of knowledge encompassing the use of effective and specific antiviral drug therapies for treating COVID-19 since the outbreak. In this review, we provide valuable insights into the repurposing of current drugs for COVID-19. Drug repurposing provides a suitable option for the discovery of efficacious drugs for COVID-19, thereby decreasing the costs and turnaround times of drug development strategies. This review provides an overview of ten drugs, including antimalarial, antiparasitic, anti-inflammatory, nucleoside analogue, monoclonal-antibody drugs, that were repurposed for the potential treatment of COVID-19.

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