Background and purpose: Flavonoids are a group of phytochemicals found abundantly in various plants. Scientific evidence has revealed that flavonoids display potential biological activities, including their ability to alleviate inflammation. This activity is closely related to their action in blocking the inflammatory cascade and inhibiting the production of pro-inflammatory factors. However, as flavonoids typically have poor bioavailability and pharmacokinetic profile, it is quite challenging to establish these compounds as a drug. Nevertheless, progressive advancements in drug delivery systems, particularly in nanotechnology, have shown promising approaches to overcome such challenges. Review approach: This narrative review provides an overview of scientific knowledge about the mechanism of action of flavonoids in the mitigation of inflammatory reaction prior to delivering a comprehensive discussion about the opportunity of the nanotechnology-based delivery system in the preparation of the flavonoid-based drug. Key results: Various studies conducted in silico, in vitro, in vivo, and clinical trials have deciphered that the anti-inflammatory activities of flavonoids are closely linked to their ability to modulate various biochemical mediators, enzymes, and signalling pathways involved in the inflammatory processes. This compound could be encapsulated in nanotechnology platforms to increase the solubility, bioavailability, and pharmacological activity of flavonoids as well as reduce the toxic effects of these compounds. Conclusion: in Summary, we conclude that flavonoids and their derivates have given promising results in their development as new anti-inflammatory drug candidates, especially if they formulate in nanoparticles.

Introduction: The current incidence of the novel coronavirus disease has shown only small reductions of cases and has become a major public health challenge. Development of effective vaccines against the virus is still being encouraged such as multi-epitope vaccines designed from the components of SARS-CoV-2 including its spike, nucleocapsid and ORF1a proteins. Since the addition of adjuvants including HABA protein and L7/L12 ribosomal are considered helpful to increase the effectiveness of the designed vaccine, we proposed to design multiepitope vaccines by two different adjuvants. Methods: We used the IEDB server to predict BCL and TCL epitopes that were characterized using online tools including VaxiJen, AllPred and IL-10 Prediction. The selected epitopes were further constructed into multiepitope vaccines. We also added two different adjuvants to the vaccine components in order to increase the effectiveness of the vaccines. The 3D-structured vaccines were built using trRosetta. They were further docked with different Toll-like-receptors (TLR 3, 4 and 8) and the entry receptor of SARS-CoV-2, ACE2 using ClusPro, PatchDock and refined by FireDock. All structures were visualized by USCF Chimera and PyMOL. Results: In this study, we succeeded in designing two different candidate vaccines by the addition of HABA protein and L7/L12 ribosomal as adjuvants. The two vaccines were almost equally good in terms of their physicochemical properties and characteristics. Likewise, their strong interactions with TLR3 4, 8 and ACE2 show the lowest energy level of both was estimated at more than -1,000. Interactions of vaccines with ACE2 and TLRs are essential for activation of immune responses and production of antibodies. Conclusion: The two designed and constructed multiepitope vaccine have good characteristics and may have the potential to activate humoral and cellular immune responses against SARS-CoV-2. Further research is worth considering to confirm the findings of this study.

Objectives: This study aimed to identify the optimal protein construction for designing a multi-epitope vaccine with both prophylactic and therapeutic effects against cervical cancer, utilizing an immunoinformatics approach. The construction process involved using capsid epitopes L1 and L2, as well as oncoproteins E5, E6, and E7 from human papillomavirus (HPV) types 16 and 18.Methods: An experimental in silico analysis with an immunoinformatics approach was used to develop 2 multi-epitope vaccine constructs (A and B). Further analysis was then conducted to compare the constructs and select the one with the highest potential against cervical cancer.Results: This study produced 2 antigenic, non-allergenic, and nontoxic multi-epitope vaccine constructs (A and B), which exhibited the ideal physicochemical properties for a vaccine. Further analysis revealed that construct B effectively induced both cellular and humoral immune responses.Conclusion: The multi-epitope vaccine construct B for HPV 16 and 18, designed for both prophylactic and therapeutic purposes, met the development criteria for a cervical cancer vaccine. However, these findings need to be validated through in vitro and in vivo experiments.

Objectives: Current tuberculosis (TB) control strategies face limitations, such as low antibiotic treatment compliance and a rise in multidrug resistance. Furthermore, the lack of a safe and effective vaccine compounds these challenges. The limited efficacy of existing vaccines against TB underscores the urgency for innovative strategies, such as immunoinformatics. Consequently, this study aimed to design a targeted multi-epitope vaccine against TB infection utilizing an immunoinformatics approach.Methods: The multi-epitope vaccine targeted Ag85A, Ag85B, ESAT-6, and CFP-10 proteins. The design adopted various immunoinformatics tools for cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL), helper T lymphocyte (HTL), and linear B lymphocyte (LBL) epitope prediction, the assessment of vaccine characteristics, structure modeling, population coverage analysis, disulfide engineering, solubility prediction, molecular docking/dynamics with toll-like receptors (TLRs), codon optimization/cloning, and immune simulation.Results: The multi-epitope vaccine, which was assembled using 12 CTL, 25 HTL, and 21 LBL epitopes associated with CpG adjuvants, showed promising characteristics. The immunoinformatics analysis confirmed the antigenicity, immunogenicity, and lack of allergenicity. Physicochemical evaluations indicated that the proteins were stable, thermostable, hydrophilic, and highly soluble. Docking simulations suggested high-affinity binding to TLRs, including TLR2, TLR4, and TLR9. In silico immune simulation predicted strong T cell (cytokine release) and B cell (immunoglobulin release) responses.Conclusion: This immunoinformatics-designed multi-epitope vaccine targeting Ag85A, Ag85B, ESAT-6, and CFP-10 proteins showed promising characteristics in terms of stability, immunogenicity, antigenicity, solubility, and predicted induction of humoral and adaptive immune responses. This suggests its potential as a prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine against TB.

Purpose : Ovarian cancer is the most lethal of gynecological malignancies. Recently, the development of microRNA (miRNA) -based therapeutics that could impact broad cellular programs, leading to inhibition of cancer cell viability, is gaining attention in the therapeutic landscape. The therapy is based on the presence of aberrant expressions of miRNA in cancer cells. Decreasing of tumor suppressor miRNA expression causes upregulation of oncoprotein, which worsens the prognosis of the ovarian cancer. Methods: miR-155-5p mimics were carried by chitosan nanoparticles using new nanotechnology methods. Cellular uptake of miRNA was assessed by fluorescence microscope while MTT and qPCR assay were used to determine miRNA profile and the effect of CS-NP/miRNA on SKOV3 cells. Results: Results of profiling validated using quantitative realtime-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) found one of the most altered tumor suppressor miRNAs, miR-155-5p was downregulated 892.15-fold. According to bioinformatic analysis we identified the miRNA could recognize and regulate HIF1α expression. Transfection of mimics for miR-155-5p showed significantly increased miR-155-5p endogen SKOV3 expression level compared to the control group. We found differences after transfection mimics for miR-155-5p 31.5 and 63 nanoMolar. Increasing of miR-155-5p endogen lead to diminished SKOV3 viability (by 30%; <0.05 at concentration 80 nanoMolar). These mimics may cause an increase in upregulated miR-155-5p endogen that can reduce HIF1α expression. Here we found 2-fold and 2.8-fold reduction of HIF1α expression level after transfection compared to the control group. Conclusion: According to these findings, the mimics miR-155-5p can inhibit ovarian cancer cell proliferation by regulating HIF1α expression.

Recently, differences in mortality rates of COVID-19 in different geographic areas have become an important subject of research because these different mortality rates appear to be associated with mutations that appeared in SARS-CoV-2. The part of the viral body called the spike protein plays a critical role in the viral attachment and entry of the virus into the host cell. Accordingly, we hypothesized that mutations in this area will affect viral infectivity. A total of 193 sequences of spike SARS-CoV-2 were randomly retrieved from five different geographic areas and collection dates (from December 2019 until July 2020). Multiple sequence alignment for mutation and phylogenetic analyses was conducted using Bioedit, UniProt, and MEGA X. We found 169 total mutations with 37 different mutations across the included samples. The D614G is the first and most frequently established mutation in different regions including Europe, Asia, America, Africa and Australia with the number of mutations of 49, 33, 17, 16 and 4, respectively. Furthermore, we also found mutations in several important domains in this virus including NTD and CTR/RBD of S1 subunit and at S2 subunit area, namely the peptide fusion (FP), and both heptad repetition (HR1 and 2) domains that suggested this could influence virus binding and membrane-host cell membrane fusion. In summary, we concluded that mutation had generated diversity of spike SARS-CoV-2 sequences worldwide and is still growing. This analysis may provide important evidence that should be considered in vaccine development in different geographic areas.