Ravindra B. Malabadi

Overview of Plant-Derived Vaccine Antigens: Dengue Virus

This review highlights the advantages and current status of plant-derived vaccine development with special reference to the dengue virus. There are numerous problems involved in dengue vaccine development, and there is no vaccine against all four dengue serotypes. Dengue vaccine development using traditional approaches has not been satisfactory in terms of inducing neutralizing antibodies. Recently, these issues were addressed by showing a very good response to inducing neutralizing antibodies by plant-derived dengue vaccine antigens. This indicates the feasibility of using plant-derived vaccine antigens as a low-cost method to combat dengue and other infectious diseases. The application of new methods and strategies such as dendritic cell targeting in cancer therapy, severe acute respiratory syndrome, tuberculosis, human immune deficiency virus, and malaria might play an important role. These new methods are more efficient than traditional protocols. It is expected that in the near future, plant-derived vaccine antigens or antibodies will play an important role in the control of human infectious diseases.

Gene Delivery System: A Developing Arena of Study for the New Era of Medicine

Gene therapy concept has been being overcome massive challenges from 1972 in ethical, socio-economical and developmental issues. In this review, we have attempted to go through almost all the arenas and described in a methodical way that reflects not only the initial ethical and scientific thoughts but also adorned a solid depiction of gene therapy related physico-chemical barriers, approaches and strategies till to date.

Production and characterization of monospecific and bispecific antibodies against dengue virus NS1 protein.

Dengue is a mosquito borne infection, which in recent years has become a major international public health concern. Annually, 100 million dengue virus infections are reported worldwide. The nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) of dengue virus is a useful target for diagnostics of dengue infection since the protein is abundantly circulating in the blood during acute phase of the disease, in both primary and secondary infections. This research paper highlights the development of a panel of Mab and bsMab for dengue NS1 detection. The P148 series of Mabs showed high specificity for recombinant dengue NS1 antigen. These antibodies showed no cross reactivity with recombinant dengue envelope protein and other viral proteins. The hybrid-hybridoma approach to generate the P156.1 and P156.2 bsMabs from the P148 monoclonal antibody method was used during this study. Furthermore, the affinity purification provided good yields of quadromas associated with HRPO in two steps. Direct detection method involved coating of plates with different concentrations of recombinant antigen and detecting with bsMab. Sensitive sandwich assay with Mabs and bsMabs was also done. Detection of nonstructural dengue antigens may be of benefit for early and rapid diagnosis of dengue infection due to their long half-life in the blood.

Heterosandwich immunoswab assay for dengue virus Ns1 antigen detection.

Dengue and the more severe dengue hemorrhagic fever have been a very critical public health problem globally. Millions of people especially in the tropical areas get infected with dengue. An efficient diagnostic is very important for early screening of dengue infection. In dengue-infected patients, the nonstructural protein NS1 is present on the surface of infected cells and secreted in plasma. The NS1 antigen is an important target for developing a quick diagnostic largely due to its long presence in the blood. We have developed a simple-to-use immunoswab-based diagnostic procedure employing monoclonal antibodies and the second-generation quadromas. The detection limit for NS1 has been established to be in the subnanogram range. The assay is very sensitive, has a visual end point, and also being extremely inexpensive. With this assay, screening time for a dengue-infected person would be very rapid.

Preparation of poly(vinyl alcohol)/chitosan/starch blends and studies on thermal and surface properties

Biopolymers are abundantly available from its natural sources of extraction. Chitosan(CH) is one of the widely used natural polymer which is perspective natural polysaccharide. Natural polymer blend with synthetic polymer enhances property of the material such as polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). PVA is nontoxic degradable synthetic polymer and very good film forming polymer. In this study prepared hybrid based film by adding starch into Chitosan/PVA which slighlty increased the surface and thermal property of ternary blend film.Biopolymers are abundantly available from its natural sources of extraction. Chitosan(CH) is one of the widely used natural polymer which is perspective natural polysaccharide. Natural polymer blend with synthetic polymer enhances property of the material such as polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). PVA is nontoxic degradable synthetic polymer and very good film forming polymer. In this study prepared hybrid based film by adding starch into Chitosan/PVA which slighlty increased the surface and thermal property of ternary blend film.