Due to the increasing problem of drug resistance, new and improved medicines are required. Natural products and biotherapeutics offer a vast resource for new drugs; however, challenges, including the cost and time taken for traditional drug discovery processes and the subsequent lack of investment from the pharmaceutical industry, are associated with these areas. New techniques are producing compounds with appropriate activity at a faster rate. While the formulation of these combined with drug-delivery systems offers a promising approach for expanding the drug developments available to modern medicine. Here, various classes of drug-delivery systems are described and the advantages they bring to small molecule and biotherapeutic targeting are highlighted. This is an attractive approach to the pharmaceutical industry and the rising trend in research in this area is examined in brief. New medicines are constantly being developed or repurposed, aimed at curing or preventing diseases or conditions where therapeutic product availability is lacking, or to reduce side effects, improve quality of life, reduce the burden on the cost of healthcare systems, while significantly extending patients' lives. However, drug discovery, research and development (R&D) can be an extensive process lasting over 7-10 years, with an average cost of $2.6 billion for each successful drug that reaches the market [1]. These substantial cost and time factors originate from the scientific, technical and regulatory challenges that are needed to fully understand the drug mechanisms of action and physiological interactions for complex diseases at molecular level. Achieving viable commercial success subsequently

Previous research has shown that propolis has immunomodulatory activity. Propolis extracts from different geographic origins were assessed for their anti-inflammatory activities by investigating their ability to alter the production of tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and the cytokines interleukin-1β (IL-1β), IL-6 and IL-10 in THP-1-derived macrophage cells co-stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS). All the propolis extracts suppressed the TNF-α and IL-6 LPS-stimulated levels. Similar suppression effects were detected for IL-1β, but the release of this cytokine was synergised by propolis samples from Ghana and Indonesia when compared with LPS. Overall, the Cameroonian propolis extract (P-C) was the most active and this was evaluated for its effects on the metabolic profile of unstimulated macrophages or macrophages activated by LPS. The levels of 81 polar metabolites were identified by liquid chromatography (LC) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS) on a ZIC-pHILIC column. LPS altered the energy, amino acid and nucleotide metabolism in THP-1 cells, and interpretation of the metabolic pathways showed that P-C reversed some of the effects of LPS. Overall, the results showed that propolis extracts exert an anti-inflammatory effect by inhibition of pro-inflammatory cytokines and by metabolic reprogramming of LPS activity in macrophage cells, suggesting an immunomodulatory effect.

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Seventeen isolates of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) producing bacteria were screened and systematically studied. They were divided into 10 groups on the basis of their phenotypic characteristics and 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses. The Gram-positive coccal isolates in Group I (3 isolates), Group II (3 isolates) and Group III (1 isolate) showed 99.2%, 99.5-99.7% and 99.8% sequences similarity to Staphylococcus saprophyticus, S. napalensis and S. sciuri, respectively. Each Gram-positive rod-shaped isolates in Group IV and V belonged to the genus Bacillus and was closely related to B. vietnamensis and B. safensis with 99.2% and 99.4% sequences similarity, respectively. The Gram-positive, moderately halophilic rod-shaped bacteria in Group VI (3 isolates), Group VII (1 isolate), Group VIII (1 isolate) and Group IX (2 isolates) were closely related to Virgibacillus halodenitrificans (98.5-99.1%), Oceanobacillus iheyensis (99.3%), Halobacillus mangrove (97.9%) and H. dabanensis (98.5-98.6%), respectively. One Gram-negative isolate of moderately halophilic bacterium (Group X) was closely related to Idiomarina zobelli (98.0%). They possessed phosphatase activities ranged from 10.08-70.96 U ml-1 . The isolate NSW 13-2 (Group VI) showed the highest ALP.