Background. A new endemic disease has spread across Wuhan City, China, in December 2019. Within few weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a novel coronavirus designated as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In late January 2020, WHO declared the outbreak of a “public-health emergency of international concern” due to the rapid and increasing spread of the disease worldwide. Currently, there is no vaccine or approved treatment for this emerging infection; thus, the objective of this study is to design a multiepitope peptide vaccine against COVID-19 using an immunoinformatics approach. Method. Several techniques facilitating the combination of the immunoinformatics approach and comparative genomic approach were used in order to determine the potential peptides for designing the T-cell epitope-based peptide vaccine using the envelope protein of 2019-nCoV as a target. Results. Extensive mutations, insertion, and deletion were discovered with comparative sequencing in the COVID-19 strain. Additionally, ten peptides binding to MHC class I and MHC class II were found to be promising candidates for vaccine design with adequate world population coverage of 88.5% and 99.99%, respectively. Conclusion. The T-cell epitope-based peptide vaccine was designed for COVID-19 using the envelope protein as an immunogenic target. Nevertheless, the proposed vaccine rapidly needs to be validated clinically in order to ensure its safety and immunogenic profile to help stop this epidemic before it leads to devastating global outbreaks.

Background: New endemic disease has been spread across Wuhan City, China on December 2019. Within few weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a novel coronavirus designated as coronavirus disease 2019 . In late January 2020, WHO declared the outbreak of a "public-health emergency of international concern" due to the rapid and increasing spread of the disease worldwide. Currently, there is no vaccine or approved treatment for this emerging infection; thus the objective of this study is to design a multi epitope peptide vaccine against COVID-19 using immunoinformatics approach. Method: Several techniques facilitating the combination of immunoinformatics approach and comparative genomic approach were used in order to determine the potential peptides for designing the T cell epitopes-based peptide vaccine using the envelope protein of 2019-nCoV as a target. Results: Extensive mutations, insertion and deletion were discovered with comparative sequencing in COVID-19 strain. Additionally, ten peptides binding to MHC class I and MHC class II were found to be promising candidates for vaccine design with adequate world population coverage of 88.5% and 99.99%, respectively. Conclusion: T cell epitopes-based peptide vaccine was designed for COVID-19 using envelope protein as an immunogenic target. Nevertheless, the proposed vaccine is rapidly needed to be validated clinically in order to ensure its safety, immunogenic profile and to help on stopping this epidemic before it leads to devastating global outbreaks.

The recent outbreak of the highly contagious coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has created a global health crisis with socioeconomic impacts. Although, recently, vaccines have been approved for the prevention of COVID-19, there is still an urgent need for the discovery of more efficacious and safer drugs especially from natural sources. In this study, a number of quinoline and quinazoline alkaloids with antiviral and/or antimalarial activity were virtually screened against three potential targets for the development of drugs against COVID-19. Among seventy-one tested compounds, twenty-three were selected for molecular docking based on their pharmacokinetic and toxicity profiles. The results identified a number of potential inhibitors. Three of them, namely, norquinadoline A, deoxytryptoquivaline, and deoxynortryptoquivaline, showed strong binding to the three targets, SARS-CoV-2 main protease, spike glycoprotein, and human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. These alkaloids therefore have promise for being further investigated as possible multitarget drugs against COVID-19.

While mankind is still dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, a case of monkeypox virus (MPXV) has been reported to the WHO on May 7, 2022. Monkeypox is a viral zoonotic disease that has been a public health threat, particularly in Africa. However, it has recently expanded to other parts of the world, so it may soon become a global issue. Thus, the current work was planned and then designed a multi-epitope vaccine against MPXV utilizing the cell surface-binding protein as a target in order to develop a novel and safe vaccine that can evoke the desirable immunological response. The proposed MHC-I, MHC-II, and B-cell epitopes were selected to design multi-epitope vaccine constructs linked with suitable linkers in combination with different adjuvants to enhance the immune responses for the vaccine constructs. The proposed vaccine was composed of 275 amino acids and was shown to be antigenic in Vaxijen server (0.5311) and non-allergenic in AllerTop server. The 3D structure of the designed vaccine was predicted, refined and validated by various in silico tools to assess the stability of the vaccine. Moreover, the solubility of the vaccine construct was found greater than the average solubility provided by protein-Sol server which indicating the solubility of the vaccine construct. Additionally, the most promising epitopes bound to MHC I and MHC II alleles were found having good binding affinities with low energies ranging between − 7.0 and − 8.6 kcal/mol. According to the immunological simulation research, the vaccine was found to elicit a particular immune reaction against the monkeypox virus. Finally, the molecular dynamic study shows that the designed vaccine is stable with minimum RMSF against MHC I allele. We conclude from our research that the cell surface-binding protein is one of the primary proteins involved in MPXV pathogenesis. As a result, our study will aid in the development of appropriate therapeutics and prompt the development of future vaccines against MPXV.

Background. Nipah belongs to the genus Henipavirus and the Paramyxoviridae family. It is an endemic most commonly found at South Asia and has first emerged in Malaysia in 1998. Bats are found to be the main reservoir for this virus, causing disease in both humans and animals. The last outbreak has occurred in May 2018 in Kerala. It is characterized by high pathogenicity and fatality rates which varies from 40% to 70% depending on the severity of the disease and on the availability of adequate healthcare facilities. Currently, there are no antiviral drugs available for NiV disease and the treatment is just supportive. Clinical presentations for this virus range from asymptomatic infection to fatal encephalitis. Objective. This study is aimed at predicting an effective epitope-based vaccine against glycoprotein G of Nipah henipavirus, using immunoinformatics approaches. Methods and Materials. Glycoprotein G of the Nipah virus sequence was retrieved from NCBI. Different prediction tools were used to analyze the epitopes, namely, BepiPred-2.0: Sequential B Cell Epitope Predictor for B cell and T cell MHC classes II and I. Then, the proposed peptides were docked using Autodock 4.0 software program. Results and Conclusions. The two peptides TVYHCSAVY and FLIDRINWI have showed a very strong binding affinity to MHC class I and MHC class II alleles. Furthermore, considering the conservancy, the affinity, and the population coverage, the peptide FLIDRINWIT is highly suitable to be utilized to formulate a new vaccine against glycoprotein G of Nipah henipavirus. An in vivo study for the proposed peptides is also highly recommended.

A simple spectrophotometric method was developed for the determination of cefadroxil in pure bulk and in capsules forms. The method is based on a direct reaction between cefadroxil and sodium hydroxide (1 N). A product with λmaxat 342 nm and molar absorptivity of 7.9x103L mol-1cm-1is formed after heating cefadroxil with sodium hydroxide (1 N) for 30 minutes. The absorbance-concentration plot was rectilinear over the range 5-25 μg/mL with correlation coefficient values not less than 0.999. The detection limit (LOD) and quantification limit (LOQ) were 0.693 μg/mL and 2.31 μg/mL. The method was validated using the BP liquid chromatographic method for cefadroxil assay. The results obtained by the developed method for the capsules dosage form were statistically compared with those of the BP liquid chromatography method and evaluated at 95% confidence limits.

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Simple spectrophotometric methods were developed for the quantitative determination of colistin sulphate in bulk and dosage forms. The methods were based on the measurement of first and second derivative spectra of colistin sulphate at 298 nm and 318 nm, respectively. Beer’s law was obeyed in the concentration range 800–4000 IU/mL with good correlation coefficient (not less than 0.998) for both methods. The developed first derivative spectrophotometric method was then selected to study the degradation behavior of colistin sulphate in alkaline media at different temperatures as the second derivative method failed to give reproducible results for the stability study. The pH-rate profile indicates a first-order dependence of the degradation rate on [OH−] at pH ranging between 8 and 11. The obtained results for the photochemical study reflected photostability of colistin sulphate.