Blog – Page 2

In Brazil, researchers from the Federal University of Grande Dourados (UFGD), the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and São Paulo State University (UNESP) have conducted a study that confirmed the safety and anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and anti-arthritic properties of the Joseph’s Coat plant (Alternanthera littoralis).

Native to the Brazilian coast, this plant has been used in folk medicine to combat inflammation, microbial infections, and parasitic diseases. Until now, there has been little pharmacological evidence to support these applications or analyze their safety.

The study is published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology.

Xu et al. report that intratumoral Citrobacter enrichment correlates with poor overall survival in pancreatic cancer patients. An intratumoral Citrobacter freundii strain metabolizes 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) into inactive products via PreTA. Gimeracil, an inhibitor of human dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase, preserves 5-FU efficacy by blocking PreTA activity.

Despite the great technological and medical advances in fighting viral diseases, new therapies for most of them are still lacking, and existing antivirals suffer from major limitations regarding drug resistance and a limited spectrum of activity. In fact, most approved antivirals are directly acting antiviral (DAA) drugs, which interfere with viral proteins and confer great selectivity towards their viral targets but suffer from resistance and limited spectrum. Nowadays, host-targeted antivirals (HTAs) are on the rise, in the drug discovery and development pipelines, in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry. These drugs target host proteins involved in the virus life cycle and are considered promising alternatives to DAAs due to their broader spectrum and lower potential for resistance.