Recent COVID-19 pandemic has caused the greatest crisis in human civilisation worldwide. Initially started in Wuhan, China it has gradually spread all over the world due to the time taken by the people to understand the seriousness of the disease. Initial symptoms are unremarkable and typical of upper respiratory tract viral infection, followed by dry unproductive coughing, low grade fever and ultimately full blown feature of pneumonia requiring hospitalisation and respiratory assistance including ICU and ventilation. Older adults, immunocompromised patients and those with several co-morbidities fall in higher risk categories irrespective of age. In this paper the origin, spread of infection and virulence, preventive steps, diagnosis and recent trends in clinical management is discussed in detail. Future implications on socio-economic point of view is mentioned in global as well as in national perspective.

The Erythrocyte Binding Ligand (EBL) is an important protein of Plasmodium sp. required by the parasite for successful invasion into the red blood cells causing malaria. EBL is a potential anti-malarial drug target. Despite its importance only a portion of its structure i.e., Duffy Binding Domain (DBD), is solved. Thus, the remaining regions necessitate attention and probing. In this study, it is reported that EBL protein consists of massive unstructured regions in between two compact structured portions, viz., the DBD and a C-terminus trans-membrane domain as predicted from our bioinformatics studies on Plasmodium vivax. Our study reveals that its major parts of the unstructured portions consist of Intrinsically Disordered Regions (IDR). Since IDRs have high rates of plasticity, the hypothesis is that it allows large molecular movements between the two structured portions of EBL helping the DBD to find its target receptor. Here, a schematic of the overall structural organization of EBL and its functional model is proposed. Thus, our study signifies possible importance of hitherto unexplored ‘disordered’-ness in EBLs in mediating pathogenesis in Plasmodium sp.

Ribosomes are large ribonucleoprotein complexes that have been proved to be ideal biological sample for the development of the cryo-Electron Microscopy (cryo-EM) field. On the other hand, advancement in cryo-EM technologies have helped in elucidating detailed structure-function aspects of various kinds of ribosomes, belonging to prokaryotic, organellar, and complex eukaryotic systems. In a relatively short duration of time, through rapid technological advances, cryo-EM has generated number of ribosome structures from sub atomic to atomic resolutions with the capability of visualizing the side chain interactions of protein structures. This has given us the scope to visualize various drugs and their binding sites on the ribosomes, wherefrom there are greater chances to improve further and modify the drugs and verify their efficacy. This review provides an account of the improvement of the cryo-EM in the light of performing research on ribosomes and understanding some of the ribosome’s structurefunction aspects in further details.

Mother-child bonding is not confined to human beings, rather all living animals show baby love. It is quite interesting to intervene in the mechanisms or causative factors of this affection and its consequences. In this article, we attempt to delineate that the chemical factors could be responsible for the affection or aggressiveness which ultimately leads to induce passive immunity in newborn against external harmful pathogens among mammals.

Cancer is among the leading causes of death worldwide. The key therapeutic modalities to treat cancer include chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, targeted therapy, immuno-therapy and combination therapy. A number of chemical agents target DNA; they cause breaks, intercalation and cross-links to damage DNA thereby inhibiting cell proliferation. Cisplatin and taxol based chemotherapies are still the most used chemotherapeutic agents which is commonly used for treating many different tumor types, including head and neck, lung, testis, ovarian, cervix and breast. In spite of being in the primary line of treatment modality, resistance to cisplatin is one the major limitation in cancer treatment. This is why the concept of combination therapies came into scene. Degradation of BRCA2 by hyperthermia causes abnormal localization of RAD51 which, in turn, attenuates the process of DNA repair via HR. Hyperthermia, in combination with PARP inhibitors is now a day is one of the best choices that is describes by several authors. This is an alternative combination to kill cancer cells causing minimum damage to normal cells. This review explores why hyperthermia should be chosen as a better modality of treatment to treat cancer in combination with PARP inhibitors.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a menace to human life worldwide. This has triggered the thrust for the development of effective therapeutics and vaccines based on varied strategies. The trend for the repurposing of approved molecules or those already in the clinical stage of development for other indications has been currently explored to facilitate speedy identification of safe and effective drugs. Passive immunization through use of monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma therapy has been an investigational treatment from our previous knowledge of SARS and MERS. The landscape for vaccine development represents several novel agents based on diverse technologies that have already entered into fast track clinical trials. A new paradigm for identifying safe and immunogenic vaccines may be achieved through adaptive development and innovative regulatory process to address the unmet need in a short span compared to the conventional timeframe. This article aims to consolidate the status of the therapeutics and vaccines in the developmental pipeline for COVID-19.