Due to the emergence of multi-drug resistant strains, development of novel antibiotics has become a critical issue. One promising approach is the use of transition metals, since they exhibit rapid and significant toxicity, at low concentrations, in prokaryotic cells. Nevertheless, one main drawback of transition metals is their toxicity in eukaryotic cells. Here, we show that the barriers to use them as therapeutic agents could be mitigated by combining them with silver. We demonstrate that synergism of combinatorial treatments (Silver/transition metals, including Zn, Co, Cd, Ni, and Cu) increases up to 8-fold their antimicrobial effect, when compared to their individual effects, against E. coli and B. subtilis. We find that most combinatorial treatments exhibit synergistic antimicrobial effects at low/ non-toxic concentrations to human keratinocyte cells, blast and melanoma rat cell lines. Moreover, we show that silver/(Cu, Ni, and Zn) increase prokaryotic cell permeability at sub-inhibitory concentrations, demonstrating this to be a possible mechanism of the synergistic behavior. Together, these results suggest that these combinatorial treatments will play an important role in the future development of antimicrobial agents and treatments against infections. In specific, the cytotoxicity experiments show that the combinations have great potential in the treatment of topical infections.

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In recent years, food proteins with bioactivity have been studied for cancer treatment. Zein peptides have shown an important set of bioactivities. This work compares the cytotoxic activity of zein hydrolyzed, extracted from four Zea species: teosinte, native, hybrid, and transgenic (Teo, Nat, Hyb, and HT) in a hepatic cell culture. Zein fraction was extracted, quantified, and hydrolyzed. Antioxidant capacity and cytotoxicity assays were performed on HepG2 cells. The levels of expression of caspase 3, 8, and 9 were evaluated in zein-treated cell cultures. Zea parviglumis showed the highest zein content (46.0 mg/g) and antioxidant activity (673.40 TE/g) out of all native zeins. Peptides from Hyb and HT showed high antioxidant activity compared to their native counterparts (1055.45 and 724.32 TE/g, respectively). Cytotoxic activity was observed in the cell culture using peptides of the four Zea species; Teo and Nat (IC50: 1781.63 and 1546.23 ng/mL) had no significant difference between them but showed more cytotoxic activity than Hyb and HT (IC50: 1252.25 and 1155.56 ng/mL). Increased expression of caspase 3 was observed in the peptide-treated HepG2 cells (at least two-fold more with respect to the control sample). These data indicate the potential for zein peptides to prevent or treat cancer, possibly by apoptosis induction.

Purpose of Review Diabetes mellitus is a complex, chronic illness characterized by elevated blood glucose levels that occurs when there is cellular resistance to insulin action, pancreatic β-cells do not produce sufficient insulin, or both. Diabetes prevalence has greatly increased in recent decades; consequently, it is considered one of the fastest-growing public health emergencies globally. Poor blood glucose control can result in long-term micro- and macrovascular complications such as nephropathy, retinopathy, neuropathy, and cardiovascular disease. Individuals with diabetes require continuous medical care, including pharmacological intervention as well as lifestyle and dietary changes. Recent Findings The most common form of diabetes mellitus, type 2 diabetes (T2DM), represents approximately 90% of all cases worldwide. T2DM occurs more often in middle-aged and elderly adults, and its cause is multifactorial. However, its incidence has increased in children and young adults due to obesity, sedentary lifestyle, and inadequate nutrition. This high incidence is also accompanied by an estimated underdiagnosis prevalence of more than 50% worldwide. Implementing successful and cost-effective strategies for systematic screening of diabetes mellitus is imperative to ensure early detection, lowering patients' risk of developing life-threatening disease complications. Therefore, identifying new biomarkers and assay methods for diabetes mellitus to develop robust, non-invasive, painless, highly-sensitive, and precise screening techniques is essential. Summary This review focuses on the recent development of new clinically validated and novel biomarkers as well as the methods for their determination that represent cost-effective alternatives for screening and early diagnosis of T2DM.

Early detection is a key factor in patient fate. Currently, multiple biomolecules have been recognized as biomarkers. Nevertheless, their identification is only the starting line on the way to their implementation in disease diagnosis. Although blood is the biofluid par excellence for the quantification of biomarkers, its extraction is uncomfortable and painful for many patients. In this sense, there is a gap in which saliva emerges as a non-invasive and valuable source of information, as it contains many of the biomarkers found in blood. Recent technological advances have made it possible to detect and quantify biomarkers in saliva samples. However, there are opportunity areas in terms of cost and complexity, which could be solved using simpler methodologies such as those based on enzymes. Many reviews have focused on presenting the state-of-the-art in identifying biomarkers in saliva samples. However, just a few of them provide critical analysis of technical elements for biomarker quantification in enzymatic methods for large-scale clinical applications. Thus, this review proposes enzymatic assays as a cost-effective alternative to overcome the limitations of current methods for the quantification of biomarkers in saliva, highlighting the technical and operational considerations necessary for sampling, method development, optimization, and validation.

A point-of-care (POC) can be defined as an in vitro diagnostic test that can provide results within minutes. It has gained enormous attention as a promising tool for biomarkers detection and diagnosis, as well as for screening of chronic noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes mellitus. Diabetes mellitus type 2 is one of the metabolic disorders that has grown exponentially in recent years, becoming one of the greatest challenges to health systems. Early detection and accurate diagnosis of this disorder are essential to provide adequate treatments. However, efforts to reduce incidence should remain not only in these stages but in developing continuous monitoring strategies. Diabetes-monitoring tools must be accessible and affordable; thus, POC platforms are attractive, especially paper-based ones. Paper-based POCs are simple and portable, can use different matrixes, do not require highly trained staff, and are less expensive than other platforms. These advantages enhance the viability of its application in low-income countries and hard-to-reach zones. This review aims to present a critical summary of the main components required to create a sensitive and affordable enzymatic paper-based POC, as well as an oriented analysis to highlight the main limitations and challenges of current POC devices for diabetes type 2 monitoring and future research opportunities in the field.