Khalid Anwar

An overview on the current status of cancer nanomedicines

Abstract Purpose: Cancer remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality across the globe. A recent report suggests around 14.1 million new cases and 8.2 million cancer-related deaths, which are expected to reach 21.7 million and 13 million by 2030 worldwide, respectively. Materials and Methods: Because of highly complex mechanisms of cancer progression, it is important to explore and develop new innovative technologies which are more efficient compared with presently available treatment options. Results: Currently, chemotherapy, radiation and surgery are the most commonly used cancer treatment methods. In the last decade, nanomedicine emerged as an alternative treatment option that uses specific drug-delivery systems, improves efficacy of drugs and reduces detrimental side effects to normal tissues. Conclusion: In this review, we have summarized cancer nanomedicines (active and passive drug delivery) available in the market. We have also discussed other nanomedicines that are at different stages of clinical trials.

Metabolic shift in sugars and amino acids regulates sprouting in Saffron corm

Saffron is one of the most expensive spices of the world. Since this spice is triploid and meiosis is unusual, it cannot reproduce sexually like other plants; rather, it is propagated vegetatively via an underground corm, which can withstand a long dry dormant period before sprouting. Thus, corms are indispensable to saffron propagation. To identify and analyse signature metabolites associated with the ‘dormancy-sprouting’ process, non-targeted GC-MS was performed at different stages of corm development. Comparative metabolite profiling reflected dissimilar profiles among the stages as portrayed by differential cluster patterns of metabolites in the PCA and PLS-DA analysis. Correlation analysis revealed the interdependencies of individual metabolites and metabolic pathway. At the onset of stage 2, characterized by the initiation and differentiation of leaf primordia, a shift from dormancy to active metabolism occurred as derived from the increased abundance of sugars and other metabolites involved in the tricarboxylic acid cycle, glycolytic, amino acid and fatty acid pathways. These changes contribute to sprouting and vegetative growth of the corm. The present study provides new insights into saffron corm composition and metabolite changes associated with various stages of corm development and may pave the way for achieving agronomical improvements in this economically important spice.

Overview of Methods for Assessing Salinity and Drought Tolerance of Transgenic Wheat Lines

Salinity and drought are interconnected, causing phenotypic, physiological, biochemical, and molecular changes in a cell. These stresses are the major factors adversely affecting growth and productivity in cereals. Genetic engineering methods have advanced to enable development of genotypes with improved salinity and drought tolerance. The resulting transgenic plant produces a group of progenies which includes moderate to high-stress tolerant transgenic lines. Development of reproducible screening methods to identify high-stress tolerant germplasm under laboratory, greenhouse, or field conditions is must. Further, field level demonstration of improved phenotypes and yield under salinity and drought stress conditions is both challenging and expensive. Fast and efficient screening techniques that could be used to screen transgenic lines under greenhouse conditions, for salt and drought stress tolerance, may contribute toward the identification of promising lines for field conditions. This chapter provides information on various approaches which can be developed during different stages of plant development for selecting salinity and drought tolerant plants in cereals, especially wheat.

Rice intermediate filament, OsIF, stabilizes photosynthetic machinery and yield under salinity and heat stress

Cytoskeleton plays a vital role in stress tolerance; however, involvement of intermediate filaments (IFs) in such a response remains elusive in crop plants. This study provides clear evidence about the unique involvement of IFs in cellular protection against abiotic stress in rice. Transcript abundance of Oryza sativa intermediate filament (OsIF) encoding gene showed 2–10 fold up-regulation under different abiotic stress. Overexpression of OsIF in transgenic rice enhanced tolerance to salinity and heat stress, while its knock-down (KD) rendered plants more sensitive thereby indicating the role of IFs in promoting survival under stress. Seeds of OsIF overexpression rice germinated normally in the presence of high salt, showed better growth, maintained chloroplast ultrastructure and favourable K+/Na+ ratio than the wild type (WT) and KD plants. Analysis of photosynthesis and chlorophyll a fluorescence data suggested better performance of both photosystem I and II in the OsIF overexpression rice under salinity stress as compared to the WT and KD. Under salinity and high temperature stress, OsIF overexpressing plants could maintain significantly high yield, while the WT and KD plants could not. Further, metabolite profiling revealed a 2–4 fold higher accumulation of proline and trehalose in OsIF overexpressing rice than WT, under salinity stress.

Investigating Abiotic Stress Response Machinery in Plants: The Metabolomic Approach

Salinity is one of the major environmental factors which limit the rice production worldwide. Rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the major staple food crops for more than half of the world’s population in addition to one of the most salt-sensitive cereals. It is estimated that one fifth of the irrigated agriculture land is already affected by high soil salinity, which warrants innovations for the agricultural production in marginal saline lands. To overcome lower productivity, it is important to study the compounds which are the “by-products” of stress metabolism, stress signal transduction, or the molecules that are part of the acclimation response in crop plants. In this regard, “metabolomics” – the study of metabolites – may contribute significantly toward improving our understanding of the salinity stress response in plants. In the present chapter, we describe various targeted and nontargeted approaches as they have been used for the study of metabolites in various plant species in response to various abiotic stresses. One of the major conclusions, which can be drawn based on these studies, is that a large subset of sugars and amino acids are upregulated during salinity stress with a decrease in the levels of various organic acids. Under salinity stress, maintenance of cellular osmoticum by accumulation of a range of osmolytes seems to be a universal response in plants. We propose that the outcome of metabolomic studies in conjunction with other omics-based studies may pave way for dissecting out the complex traits such as salinity tolerance.

Publisher Correction: Rice intermediate filament, OsIF, stabilizes photosynthetic machinery and yield under salinity and heat stress

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.

Fascinating Fungal Endophytes Role and Possible Beneficial Applications: An Overview

Plants constitute immense and diverse niches for endophytic organisms, and their associations are well reported by many researchers. Certain microorganisms like endophytes prevail in the interior portion of plants, like roots, shoots, leaves, and stems, and do not harm the host plant. Fungi pose symbiotic relationship with plants, showing diversity in enrichment of resources and habitats. Even though these plant microbial interactions were reported from ancient years, an understanding of the mechanisms enabling these microorganisms to interact with host plants is still a dilemma. Unrevealing such unknown interaction pathways and signaling would be a crucial step in biotechnology which would probably lead to the production of different unique and novel compounds. Such compound may have the ultimate role in various applications in future biotechnology. Similarly, the potential of many isolated fungal endophytes has also not been studied well. Hence, an attempt has been made to coordinate the possibilities of usage of isolated endophytes in this chapter. Their uniqueness and specificity were studied with solid-state fermentation and submerged fermentation at a wide range of pH and temperature and few secondary metabolites and industrially important enzymes; its various applications and the common fungi used for such studies have also been discussed in this chapter.

Crop Genetic Engineering: An Approach to Improve Fungal Resistance in Plant System

Fungal disease in crop plants from the past two decades has seen to be increasing which is recognized as a serious threat to food security worldwide. It is difficult for plant to survive under these unfavorable conditions which cause an unprecedented number of fungal and fungal-like diseases which are the most common kind of plant disease. Various approaches such as use of chemical pesticides and other synthetic molecules have been used to control the fungal infections in crop plants. Different transgenic plants have been developed by introducing various genes responsible for resistance in opposition to fungal pathogens. Genes of the enzymes responsible for cell wall degradation are frequently applied to generate transgenic plants for fungal resistance. This chapter mainly emphasizes on how transgenic approach helps to confer plant resistance toward fungal diseases.