The study of biomolecular interactions is crucial to get more insight into the biological system. The interactions of protein-protein, protein-nucleic acids, protein-sugars, nucleic acid-nucleic acids and protein-small molecules are supporting therapeutics and technological developments. Recently, the development in a large number of analytical techniques for characterizing biomolecular interactions reflect the promising research investments in this field. In this review, microscale thermophoresis technology (MST) is presented as an analytical technique for characterizing biomolecular interactions. Recent years have seen much progress and several applications established. MST is a powerful technique in quantitation of binding events based on the movement of molecules in microscopic temperature gradient. Simplicity, free solutions analysis, low sample volume, short analysis time, and immobilization free are the MST advantages over other competitive techniques. A wide range of studies in biomolecular interactions have been successfully carried out using MST, which tend to the versatility of the technique to use in screening binding events in order to save time, cost and obtained high data quality.
Graphene, owing to its unique chemical structure and extraordinary chemical, electrical, thermal, optical, and mechanical properties, has opened up a new vista of applications, specifically as novel sensing platforms. The last decade has seen an extensive exploration of graphene and graphene-based materials either alone or modified with nanoparticles and polymers for the fabrication of nanoscale biosensors. These biosensors displayed excellent conductivity, high sensitivity, and selectivity, good accuracy, and precision, rapid detection with low detection limits as well as long-term stability. The unmatched properties of graphene and graphene-based materials have been applied for the detection of a number of chemical and biological molecules successfully for the diagnosis of a variety of diseases, pathogens, and biomarkers of the diseases. This review is aimed to cover the fabrication methods, functionalization techniques, and biomedical applications along with the recent advancements in the field of development of graphene-based biosensors. Recent clinical trials and patents as well as market trends and opportunities associated with graphene-based biosensors are also summarized. The application of graphene-based biosensors in the detection of SARS-CoV-2 causing COVID-19 is also reviewed.
Biologics have more complex production processes compared to small-molecule drugs. They may even prove labile when drifting from batch-to-batch or in different production locations. The development of new similar biological product was regulated early to face the relevant challenges of this industry. As a result, since 2006 biosimilars were introduced to biotechnology arena with a massive competition in pharmaceutical industry. In this review, the aspects related to similarity testing of biosimilars to the original biological products are discussed involving manufacturing challenges to ensure the quality, safety, and efficacy of these products to the patient health. Immunogenicity studies are highlighted as an important part of the safety assessments. Additionally, several analytical methods that are usually used to evaluate biosimilars in comparison to their reference biologic are summarized and categorized in terms of the intended physicochemical and biological characterization. On the other hand, the international efforts of several regulatory agencies including the European Medicines Agency, World Health Organization and United States Food and Drug Administration for biosimilar development are discussed according to updated revised guidelines.
Chondroitin sulfate A was covalently immobilized onto a monolithic silica epoxy column involving a Schiff base formation in the presence of ethylenediamine as a spacer and evaluated in terms of its selectivity in enantioseparation. The obtained column was utilized as a chiral stationary phase in enantioseparation of amlodipine and verapamil using a mobile phase consisting of 50 mM phosphate buffer pH 3.5 and UV detection. Sample dilution by organic solvents (preferably 25% v/v acetonitrile-aqueous solution) was applied to achieve baseline enantioresolution (Rs > 3.0) of the individual drug models within 7 min, an excellent linearity (R2 = 0.999) and an interday repeatability of 1.1% to 1.8% RSD. The performance of the immobilized column for quantification of racemate in commercial tablets showed a recovery of 86–98% from tablet matrices. Computational modeling by molecular docking was employed to investigate the feasible complexes between enantiomers and the chiral selector.
The process of choosing the most proper technique for studying the molecular interactions is based on critical factors such as instrumentation complexity, automation, experimental procedures, analysis time, consumables, and costvalue. This review has tracked the use of affinity capillary electrophoresis (ACE) and microscale thermophoresis (MST) techniques in the evaluation of molecular binding among different molecules during the 5 years 2016-2021. ACE has proved to be an attractive technique for biomolecular characterization with high resolution efficiency where small variations in several controlling factors can much improve such efficiency compared to other analytical techniques. Meanwhile, MST has proved its higher sensitivity for smaller amounts of complex non-purified biosamples without affecting its robustness while providing high through output. However, the main motivation to review both techniques in the proposed review was their capability to carry out all experiments without the
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