Currently, radiotherapy is one of the most effective strategies to treat cancer. However, deleterious toxicity against normal cells indicate for the need to selectively protect them. Reactive oxygen and nitrogen species reinforce ionizing radiation cytotoxicity, and compounds able to scavenge these species or enhance antioxidant enzymes (e.g., superoxide dismutase, catalase, and glutathione peroxidase) should be properly investigated. Antioxidant plant-derived compounds, such as phenols and polyphenols, could represent a valuable alternative to synthetic compounds to be used as radio-protective agents. In fact, their dose-dependent antioxidant/pro-oxidant efficacy could provide a high degree of protection to normal tissues, with little or no protection to tumor cells. The present review provides an update of the current scientific knowledge of polyphenols in pure forms or in plant extracts with good evidence concerning their possible radiomodulating action. Indeed, with few exceptions, to date, the fragmentary data available mostly derive from in vitro studies, which do not find comfort in preclinical and/or clinical studies. On the contrary, when preclinical studies are reported, especially regarding the bioactivity of a plant extract, its chemical composition is not taken into account, avoiding any standardization and compromising data reproducibility.

A new pathogen severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread worldwide and become pandemic with thousands new deaths and infected cases globally. To treat the patients with coronavirus disease (COVID-19), currently no effective drug or vaccine is available. This necessity motivated us to explore potential lead compounds based natural products targeting main protease (M^pro) enzyme of SARS-CoV-2. The M^pro enzyme plays a key role in mediating viral replication and transcription and thus being considered as an attractive drug target. Herein, comprehensive computational investigations were performed to identify new lead compounds against main protease enzyme. In this study, the candidate anthocyanin-derived compounds from PubChem database were filtered considering antiviral characteristics of anthocyanins. The structure-based pharmacophore modeling was developed based on the co-crystallized structure of the enzyme with its biological active inhibitor. The generated hypotheses were applied for virtual screening-based PHASE Screen Score. Docking based virtual screening work flow was used to generate hit compounds using HTVS, SP and XP based Glide Gscore. The obtained hit compounds were filtered using ADMET pharmacological and physicochemical properties screening. Molecular dynamics simulations were performed to explore the binding affinities of the considered compounds. Our study identified six best anthocyanin-derived natural compounds which could be used as promising lead compounds against main protease SARS-CoV-2 virus. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma Graphical Abstract

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) from Valle Agricola is a legume cultivated in Southern Italy whose intake is strictly linked to rural traditions. In order to get new biochemical insight on this landrace and to promote its consumption and marketing, nutritional values (moisture content, total proteins, lipids, total and free amino acids) and metabolic traits are deeply investigated. Valle Agricola chickpea is nutritionally rich in proteins (19.70 g/100 g) and essential amino acids (7.12 g/100 g; ~40% of total). Carbohydrates, whose identity was unraveled by means of UHPLC-HR MS/MS analysis, were almost 60% of chemicals. In particular, a di-galactosylglycerol, a pinitol digalactoside, and a galactosylciceritol were found as constitutive, together with different raffinose-series oligosaccharides. Although lipids were the less constitutive compounds, glycerophospholipids were identified, while among free fatty acids linoleic acid (C18:2) was the most abundant, followed by oleic (C18:1) and palmitic (C16:0) acids. Isoflavones and hydroxybenzoic acid derivatives were also detected. Valle Agricola chickpeas showed very good levels of several mineral nutrients, especially magnesium (164 mg/100 g), potassium (748 mg/100 g), calcium (200 mg/100 g), zinc (4.20 mg/100 g) and manganese (0.45 mg/100 g). The boiling process favorably decreases anti-trypsin and anti-chymotrypsin activities, depleting this precious seed of its intrinsic antinutritional factors.

The epidemic, caused by SARS-CoV-2 at the beginning of 2020, led us to a serious change in our lifestyle that for about three months has confined us to our homes, far from our laboratory routine. In this period, the belief that the work of a researcher should never stop has been the driving force in writing the present paper. It aims at reviewing the recent scientific knowledge about in vitro experimental data that focused on the antiviral role of phenols and polyphenols against different species of coronaviruses (CoVs), pointing up the viral targets potentially involved. In the current literature scenario, the papain-like and the 3-chymotrypsin-like proteases seem to be the most deeply investigated and a number of isolated natural (poly)phenols has been screened for their efficacy.