299 research outputs found
Antiprotozoal Activity of Natural Products
No full textDear Colleagues,
Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), caused by protozoan parasites, are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among the world’s low-income populations. They affect more than 1 billion people worldwide, causing around 500000 deaths each year and social discrimination and physical suffering. Of the 17 major NTDs, the life-threatening diseases Leishmaniasis, Malaria, Chagas disease, and human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) are considered the most challenging due to their limited therapeutic options and high mortality rates. The absence of eagerly desired vaccines and the availability of limited chemotherapeutics, some with reduced efficacy and considerable drawbacks, hinder the efficient treatment of these diseases. Therefore, the discovery and development of novel effective, safe, and inexpensive antiprotozoal agents remain an urgent need. In this scenario, natural products can play an important role as potential lead compounds as they might have advantages over conventional chemical-based drugs (e.g., fewer drawbacks, better bioavailability, and less long-term toxicity). On this basis, this Special Issue is designed to gather review papers and original articles dealing with the potential antiprotozoal activities of plant secondary metabolites, including different classes such as terpenoids, alkaloids and phenolics. The Special Issue welcomes contributions on the following topics:
Phytochemical analysis and biological evaluation (in vitro and/or in vivo studies) of plant extracts/essential oils and isolated compounds.
Mode of action studies of natural products.
Structure-activity relationships studies including hemi-synthesized molecules.
Synergistic and antagonistic studies of mixtures of natural products
Development of new anti-protozoal agent formulations
Prof. Dr. Filippo Maggi
Dr. Riccardo Petrelli
Guest Editor
Antiprotozoal Activity of Natural Products: 2nd Edition
No full textDear Colleagues,
The success of the first volume of this Special Issue, entitled "Antiprotozoal Activity of Natural Products" (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/antibiotics/special_issues/anti_protozoal_activity), encourages us to open a second volume focused on the same topic.
As a continuation of the first Special Issue, the second volume will gather review papers and original articles dealing with the potential antiprotozoal activities of plant secondary metabolites, including different classes such as terpenoids, alkaloids, and phenolics. This Special Issue welcomes contributions on the following topics:
Phytochemical analysis and biological evaluation (in vitro and/or in vivo studies) of plant extracts/essential oils and isolated compounds.
Mode of action (MoA) studies of natural products.
Structure–activity relationship (SAR) studies, including hemi-synthesized molecules.
Synergistic and antagonistic studies of mixtures of natural products.
Development of new antiprotozoal agent formulations
sj-docx-2-tam-10.1177_17588359241231259 – Supplemental material for Adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy for MSI early gastric cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis
No full textSupplemental material, sj-docx-2-tam-10.1177_17588359241231259 for Adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy for MSI early gastric cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis by Fausto Petrelli, Maria Antista, Francesca Marra, Fulvia Milena Cribiu’, Valentina Rampulla, Filippo Pietrantonio, Lorenzo Dottorini, Michele Ghidini, Andrea Luciani, Alberto Zaniboni and Gianluca Tomasello in Therapeutic Advances in Medical Oncology</p
sj-docx-1-tam-10.1177_17588359241231259 – Supplemental material for Adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy for MSI early gastric cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis
No full textSupplemental material, sj-docx-1-tam-10.1177_17588359241231259 for Adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy for MSI early gastric cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis by Fausto Petrelli, Maria Antista, Francesca Marra, Fulvia Milena Cribiu’, Valentina Rampulla, Filippo Pietrantonio, Lorenzo Dottorini, Michele Ghidini, Andrea Luciani, Alberto Zaniboni and Gianluca Tomasello in Therapeutic Advances in Medical Oncology</p
A Darkness Endemic to Mississippi: Jesmyn Ward’s Haunted Places
No full textThe literature of the Southern United States has always been expression of a multilayered connection with ‘place,’ a complex term encompassing identity, history, and politics. Because of its distinctive history, the South’s literary landscapes are often haunted by real and metaphorical ghosts: simulacra of the region’s burdensome and blood-soaked legacy. A narration that acknowledges the existence of specters further complicates the representation of southern space through the polysemic, unpredictable connection with the netherworld. The traditional chronotope of the South, that of the self-supporting idyll, is forced to interact with a repressed, troubling beyond. Haunted places enable forms of counter-communication that challenge the status quo, because, as Jacques Derrida writes, addressing ghosts is also a quest for justice that goes beyond the living present. In the case of a political author like Jesmyn Ward, the commitment to justice is clearly expressed in her use of gothic tropes as a way to channel and revive the suffocated voices of the past. Ward’s work questions the present and restores the dark corners of her native Mississippi’s history. Through theories of literary spaces and hauntology, this essay analyzes Ward’s militant poetics, and how they are grounded in the relationship between immanent and transcendental landscapes
Manifest destiny: the American west as a map of the unconscious
No full textThe aim of this essay is to analyze the role of space and the different layers of significance associated to it in the Image Comics series Manifest Destiny. The American frontier epic still stand as one of the vastest and most important mythological sources of the US. The frontier space is not of course limited to its geographical dimension – at least from 1893 onwards, when the “closure” of the frontier and the publication of the Turner Thesis made it a polysemic “place” in which psychological, political and social elements met and conflicted with one another. Since the definition of this space was always dependent upon ideological stances, its depiction has always oscillated between the poles of Utopia and Dystopia, blending realism, imagination and ideology. Manifest Destiny is not an exception – its spatial dimension conjugates history and mythology, while also showing the strong influence of popular culture and pulp culture’s horror and weird literature, mainly via its most famous author: H. P. Lovecraft. Through the use of some classical outlooks on the American frontier like Frederick Jackson Turner and Richard Slotkin’s theses, together with some more general contributions on the cultural and narrative meaning of space like Edward Soja’s Thirdspace, Yi-Fu Tuan’s human geography and Ruth D. Weston’s analysis of the gothic space, the essay goes through the “mindscape” projected by Manifest Destiny’s geography and addresses its symbolic and allegorical meaning. As a result, the series’ unconventional take on American mythology and its iconoclastic political agenda are thoroughly deconstructed and examined
The corpse, the machine, the garden: immagini di guerra e ideologia pastorale in The Orchard Keeper
No full textCormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper is generally considered to be a requiem for the Southern pastoral idyll. Critics have already noticed how the author makes use of the classic "machine in the garden" motif to exemplify the destructive effects of historical and technological progress on the mythical dimension of the pastoral world. This detrimental intrusion is embodied in the novel by an enigmatic "government tank" and by the hidden corpse of a military veteran turned highwayman. Through the interpretation of these symbols as figurations of both WWI and WWII, this essay posits the centrality of war itself as the main threat to the pastoral order of life
"Un caso di omosessualità femminile". Note e commenti su un caso senza nome.
No full textThe author re-examines Freud’s Psychogenesis of a Case of Female Homosexuality by reflecting on his technique, which was more advanced than that used in the case of Dora, and by taking a closer look at the psychodynamics of perversion, based on Freud’s identification of the patient’s unconscious fantasy of killing the mother and child. In the author’s view, this was possible thanks to Freud’s understanding of masochistic masturbatory fantasies, which he described in a contemporary essay A child is being beaten.
L’autore presenta una rivisitazione del lavoro Psicogenesi di un caso di omosessualità femminile di Freud a partire da alcune riflessioni sulla tecnica, sviluppate nel confronto con il caso di Dora, e dall’approfondimento della psicodinamica della perversione in base all’individuazione nella paziente di una fantasia inconscia di uccisione della coppia madre-bambino. Si sostiene la tesi che ciò fu possibile in base alla comprensione delle fantasie masturbatorie masochistiche alla quale Freud era pervenuto nel saggio contemporaneo Un bambino viene picchiato
La versione di Nnedi Okorafor: Black Panther tra Afrofuturism e Africanfuturism
No full textNaijamerican author Nnedi Okorafor describes her sci-fi works as belonging to the Africanfuturist genre rather than to Afrofuturism writ large. In her opinion, Afrofuturism is characterized by a strong focus on African American culture, while Africanfuturism needs to be rooted “first and foremost in Africa,” privileging the continent and the black diaspora as its subject matter. Okorafor is vocal in supporting this distinction, but she shies away from giving a thorough definition of the genre, briefly hinting at the differences between Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism through Ryan Coogler’s film Black Panther (2018). Comparing Okorafor’s contribution to the Black Panther Marvel comic with Coogler’s cinematic adaptation and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s critically acclaimed installment of the superhero’s adventures, this essay provides a closer inspection of the relationship between Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism in relation to the narrative universe of Wakanda
CHEMICAL COMPOSITION, ANTIMICROBIAL AND ANTIPROLIFERATIVE ACTIVITIES OF THE ESSENTIAL OIL FROM CAMEROONIAN ERIGERON FLORIBUNDUS
No full textErigeron floribundus (Asteraceae) is a herbaceous plant, 1.5 m in height, with pubescent, lanceolate leaves and flowers in yellowish panicles. In Cameroon it is widely used in the folk medicine to treat angina, female infertility, AIDS, dental pain, headache and various diseases of microbial and non-microbial origin (1). Despite the interest in its bioactivity, the plant has received little phytochemical investigation. For this reason, we became interested in the evaluation of in vitro antimicrobial and antiproliferative activities of the essential oil obtained from the aerial parts of E. floribundus, using agar disc diffusion and microdilution, and MTT methods, respectively. Since essential oils represent an interesting alternative approach against the occurrence of drug resistance in many infectious bacterial pathogens, we completed the work by investigating the inhibitory effects of E. floribundus essential oil on nicotinate mononucleotide adenylyltransferase (NadD). NadD occupies a central position in bacterial NAD+ biosynthesis and is essential for cellular NAD+ synthesis, as demonstrated by gene deletion, targeted protein degradation, and knocking down experiments (2). Based on this finding, NadD has been recently recognized as a promising new target for developing novel antibiotics (3). Another attractive aspect of targeting NadD is that it is highly conserved in the overwhelming majority of bacterial genomes including most pathogens. Therefore, natural products based on NadD inhibition have the potential of possessing wide-spectrum antibacterial activity. The results of this study will be discussed.
(1) Berto, C.; Maggi, F.; Nya, P.C.B.; Pettena, A.; Boschiero, I.; Dall'Acqua, S. Phenolic constituents of Erigeron floribundus (Asteraceae), a Cameroonian medicinal plant. Nat. Prod. Commun. 2014, 9, 1691-1694.
(2) Sorci, L.; Kurnasov, O.; Rodionov, D.A.; Osterman, A.L. Genomics and Enzymology of NAD Biosynthesis. Comprehensive Natural Products II Chemistry and Biology, Elsevier: Oxford, 2010, 7, 213-257.
(3) Petrelli, R.; Felczak, K.; Cappellacci, L. NMN/NaMN adenylyltransferase (NMNAT) and NAD kinase (NADK) inhibitors: chemistry an,d potential therapeutic applications. Curr. Med. Chem. 2011, 18, 1973-1992
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