Category Technology

A group from enGenes Biotech GmbH, Muthgasse 11, 1190 Vienna, Austria, etc. has reported about a drug delivery system using shiga toxin B subunit in cancer therapy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10157870/

Shiga Toxin B subunit (STxB) is a kind of lectin which is specific to the glycosphingolipid (GSL) globotriaosylceramide (Gb3) on target tumore cells. Monomethyl auristatin E (MMAE) was conjugated to StxB (STxB-MMAE), and its tumore cell-killing capability was evakluated with using two types of cells, human colorectal adenocarcinoma cell lines—HT-29 (Gb3+) and LS-174 (Gb3-). The STxB–MMAE conjugate induced uptake and release of the MMAE drug in Gb3-positive tumor cells, reaching 94% of HT-29 cell elimination at 72 h post-treatment.

A group from Institut Pasteur Université Paris Cité, CNRS UMR 6047, Genetics of Biofilms laboratory, Paris, France, etc. has reported about non-biocidal surface-active polysaccharides to prevent the initial adhesion and aggregation of bacterial pathogens.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10156666/

Bacterial biofilms are widespread surface-attached or aggregated bacteria that can negatively impact human activities when developing on medical or industrial surfaces. Due to their high tolerance to antibiotics, biofilms are difficult to eradicate, and the prevention of biofilm-associated infections is a major health and economic issue. Strategies to prevent biofilm formation often target the initial steps of bacterial adhesion using surfaces coated by biocidal agents such as broad-spectrum antibiotics or heavy metals5. These biocidal approaches are limited by the rapid accumulation of dead bacteria and organic debris, which reduces the activity of the coated surfaces toward new incoming cells.

Here, the antibiofilm activity of a panel of 31 purified Gram+ or Gram bacterial capsular polysaccharides of known composition and structure was investigated. Among those, nine new non-biocidal polysaccharides were found, which inhibite biofilm formation by prototypical nosocomial pathogens, including E. coli and S. aureus.

Through the detailed anayses for these polysaccharides, it was found that the combination of a loose structure (i.e. a large permeability to flow due to a large number of intraparticle voids) and a high density of carried electrostatic charges is critical for polysaccharides to exhibit antibiofilm activity.

A group from Department of Microbiology, Himachal Pradesh University, Summerhill, Shimla, India, etc. has reprted about plant growth promoting Bacteria (PGPB) for Enhancing Growth of Rice Crops.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10142854/

This investigation was undertaken with the aim of selecting multifarious plant growth-promoting Bacillus strains from the rice rhizosphere. The individual inoculation of seeds and coinoculation of Bacillus strains (Bacillus licheniformis MNNITSR2 and Bacillus velezensis MNNITSR18) showed a significant increase in overall plant growth without any chemical fertilizer amendments such as the murate of potash, diammonium phosphate and urea, etc. In detail, Bacillus MNNIT SR2 showed a significant increase in fresh shoot and root length (14.7% and 30.8%, respectively) and the dry weight of the shoot and root (53% and 35.6%, respectively) of rice plants after eight weeks compared to the untreated control in the pot culture assay. Similar results were obtained with Bacillus velezensis MNNIT SR18 which also increased the fresh shoot and root length (17% and 20%) and the dry weight of the shoot and root (88.3% and 83.7%) of rice plants after eight weeks compared to the untreated control in the pot culture assay.

These Bacillus strains show the following plant growth promoting activities.

IAA Production: which regulates various physiological processes, including root initiation, cell enlargement, and the stimulation of cell division, and results in an increase in the root surface area while enabling the plant to take up significantly more nutrients from the soil.
Phosphate Solubilization: Plants utilize only inorganic phosphorus, and organic phosphorus compounds must first be hydrolyzed by phosphatase enzymes.
Siderophore Production: which chelates iron in the rhizosphere and prevents fungal pathogens from flourishing in iron-limiting conditions.
Antifungal Activity: both strains were able to inhibit the mycelial growth of F. oxysporum and R. solani.
HCN Production: which affects the respiratory system of plant pathogenic fungi and leads to the inhibition of their mycelial growth.
Ammonia Production: which directly promotes plant growth and productivity
ACC Deaminase Activity: which has beneficial effects on the growth of plants by reducing the concentration of ACC under a wide range of different abiotic stresses, viz., salt stress, flooding stress, heavy metal stress, and pathogen attack
Abiotic Stress Tolerance Activity: both strains also showed salt and drought tolerance and were found to be resistant to 10–15% NaCl and 25% PEG 6000, respectively

The optic biome sensor (OBS) that Mx (emukk) is developing is based on an optical fiber sensor, and has been devised under the motto of low cost, easy-to-usey and high speed sensing.
The first OBS (OBS1) was an demonstrator of this idea, and its mission was to confirm its operation.
In the second OBS (OBS2), we have improved its practicality by constructing the housing with robust black alumite and introducing an echange function of the optical fiber sensors. As a result, we were able to demonstrate that bacteria (living bacteria) can be measured over a wide measurement range of 1,000 cells/mL to 200 million cells/mL. We will continue this demonstration work while expanding the target bacterial species.
OBSの性能の一端をご紹介

OBS Unit 3 (OBS3) will have a smooth curve in the housing by using plastic housing, while advancing the realization of a low price and setting an outlook for commercialization.

Setting the OBS2 in a pipette holder and measuring a sample

A group from G.B. Elyakov Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Far-Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, Russia, etc. has reported about antiviral activities of κ-Carrageenan polyelectrolyte complex with chitosan
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-3397/21/4/238

Some of the well known polysaccharides of marine origin are the polysaccharides of red algae—carrageenans (CRGs). It is known that CRGs, mimicking heparan sulfate, are potential antivirals that can interfere with the early stages of viral replication, including virus entry, by masking the positive charge of the virus surface receptors to prevent them from binding to the heparan sulfate proteoglycans in the host cell surface. CRGs can be included in pharmaceutical compositions for the prevention or treatment of viral infections with no side effects.

Nanoparticles formation is one of the ways to modulate the physicochemical properties and enhance the activity of original polysaccharides. For this purpose, based on the polysaccharide of red algae, κ-carrageenan (κ-CRG), its polyelectrolyte complex (PEC), with chitosan (CH), were obtained. Obtained average diameter of nano@articles were about 150–200 nm.

The antiviral effect of these compounds was assessed by the inhibition rate of the cytopathogenic effect of the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) in Vero cells. As a result, a two-fold increase in the antiherpetic activity (selective index) of PEC compared to κ-CRG and a 13 times increase compared to CH were shown, which was considered to be due to a change in the physicochemical characteristics of κ-CRG in PEC.

A group from Department of Genetics and Biotechnology, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine, etc. has reported about development of novel antibiotics from Actinomycetia isolated from the rhizosphere soil of Juniperus excelsa.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10031196/

Natural products play a key role in drug discovery, especially in the treatment of infectious diseases. However, the rapid spread of bacterial infections has been observed in recent decades, mainly due to the rapid emergence and spread of multidrug-resistant pathogens. As a consequence, there is now a general consensus that the discovery of new antibiotics is needed as the best solution in the fight against antibiotic resistance among microorganisms.

In this work, the 372 actinomycete-like strains were isolated in 2008 from rhizosphere soil of J. excelsa collected from mountainous region on the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine. First of all, those strains were screened by means of the spot inoculation method to evaluate antimicrobial activity, and the secondary metabolite extracts from selected strains were analyzed by LC–MS and dereplication analysis.

As a result, it was found that the Streptomyces sp. Je 1–651 strain exhibited strong inhibitory activity against all of the utilised microbial test cultures, except for P. aeruginosa. In the crude extracts of the Je 1–651 strain grown on DNPM medium, there were seven peaks (indicated by Red stars below) not identified in the existing database in addition to those of spiramycins and stambomycins. This may indicate the potential novelty of antibiotic compounds, and the future research is expected.