Extensive application of agrochemicals for crop production and protection has negatively affected soil health, crop productivity, and the environment. Organic amendments have been proposed as an efficient alternative for enhancing soil and plant health. Vermicompost amendment offers a sustainable approach to plant nutrition, improving soil health and fertility. This review aims to provide key insights into the potential of vermicompost to boost crop production and protect crops from biotic and abiotic stresses without harming the environment. The role played by earthworms in improving organic matter decomposition, soil fertility, and soil microorganisms’ activity is also discussed here. The value of vermicompost is its promotion of plant growth based on its enrichment with all essential nutrients, beneficial microbes, and plant growth hormones. This review analyzes how vermicompost regulates plant growth and its role in mitigating abiotic stresses such as soil salinity and drought, as well as biotic stresses such as diseases and insect pests attack. The beneficial effects of hormones and humic substances present in vermicompost are also discussed in this review. In fact, due to its properties, vermicompost can be a good substitute for chemical fertilizers and pesticides and its usage could contribute to producing healthy, contaminant-free food for the growing population without negatively affecting the environment.

Thanks to recent advances in analytical technologies and statistical capabilities, the application field of metabolomics has increased significantly. Currently, this approach is used to investigate biological substrates looking for metabolic profile alterations, diseases markers, and drug effects. In particular, NMR spectroscopy has shown great potential as a detection technique, mainly for the ability to detect multiple (10s to 100s) metabolites at once without separation. Only in recent years has the NMR-based metabolomic approach been extended to investigate the cell metabolic alterations induced by metal-based antitumor drug administration. As expected, these studies are mainly focused on platinum complexes, but some palladium and ruthenium compounds are also under investigation. The use of a metabolomics approach was very effective in assessing tumor response to drugs and providing insights into the mechanism of action and resistance. Therefore, metabolomics may open new perspectives into the development of metal-based drugs. In particular, it has been shown that NMR-based, in vitro metabolomics is a powerful tool for detecting variations of the cell metabolites induced by the metal drug exposure, thus offering also the possibility of identifying specific markers for in vivo monitoring of tumor responsiveness to anticancer treatments.

The novel [Pt(O,O′-acac)(γ-acac)(DMS)], Ptac2S, Pt(II) complex has recently gained increasing attention as a potential anticancer agent for its pharmacological activity shown in different tumor cell lines, studied both in vitro and in vivo. The mechanism of action of Ptac2S, operating on non-genomic targets, is known to be very different from that of cis-[PtCl₂(NH₃)₂], cisplatin, targeting nucleic acids. In this work, we evaluated the cytotoxicity of Ptac2S on the cisplatin resistant Epithelial Ovarian Carcinoma (EOC), SKOV-3 cells, by the MTT assay. A ¹H-NMR metabolomic approach coupled with multivariate statistical analysis was used for the first time for Ptac2S to figure out the biological mechanisms of action of the complex. The metabolic variations of intracellular metabolites and the composition of the corresponding extracellular culture media were compared to those of cisplatin (cells were treated at the IC₅₀ doses of both drugs). The reported comparative metabolomic analysis revealed a very different metabolic profile between Ptac2S and cisplatin treated samples, thus confirming the different mechanism of action of Ptac2S also in the Epithelial Ovarian Carcinoma (EOC), SKOV-3 cells line. In particular, higher levels of pyruvate were observed in Ptac2S treated, with respect to cisplatin treated, cells (in both aqueous and culture media). In addition, a very different lipid expression resulted after the exposure to the two drugs (Ptac2S and cisplatin). These results suggest a possible explanation for the Ptac2S ability to circumvent cisplatin resistance in SKOV-3 cells.

Environmental pollution has become a pressing concern worldwide due to the accumulation of pollutants from industries and agricultural sectors in soil and water environments. Heavy metals pose severe hazards to the environment, plants, and human health. Consequently, an eco-friendly technique is needed to combat environmental pollutants. Vermibiochar, a product prepared through the combined action of earthworms and biochar, demonstrates great potential in reducing heavy metal concentrations in contaminated soil. Its large surface area and high cation exchange capacity enhance the sorption of contaminants onto the vermibiochar surface, reducing their bioavailability. This review highlights the roles played by earthworms and biochar in heavy metal detoxification and immobilization. It discusses the current methods of remediation, vermibiochar production, its effects on soil properties and plant growth, and biochar’s impact on earthworm growth and reproduction. The studies reviewed suggest that vermibiochar is a novel strategy for addressing heavy metal contamination.

Pomegranate peel extract is rich of interesting bioactive chemicals, principally phenolic compounds, which have shown antimicrobial, anticancer, and antioxidative properties. The aim of this work was to improve extract’ bioactivity through the adsorption on calcium carbonate nanocrystals. Nanocrystals revealed as efficient tools for extract adsorption reaching 50% of loading efficiency. Controlled release of the contained metabolites under acidic pH has been found, as it was confirmed by quantitative assay and qualitative study through NMR analysis. Specific functionality of inorganic nanocarriers could be also tuned by biopolymeric coating. The resulting coated nanoformulations showed a great antimicrobial activity against B. cinerea fungus preventing strawberries disease better than a commercial fungicide. Furthermore, nanoformulations demonstrated a good antiproliferative activity in neuroblastoma and breast cancer cells carrying out a higher cytotoxic effect respect to free extract, confirming a crucial role of nanocarriers. Finally, pomegranate peel extract showed a very high radical scavenging ability, equal to ascorbic acid. Antioxidant activity, measured also in intracellular environment, highlighted a protective action of extract‐adsorbed nanocrystals twice than free extract, providing a possible application for new nutraceutical formulations.

Starting from the [PtCl(η¹-C₂H₄OMe)(phen)] (phen = 1,10-phenanthroline, 1) platinum(II) precursor, we synthesized and characterized by multinuclear NMR new [Pt(η¹-C₂H₄OMe)(L)(phen)]⁺ (L = NH₃, 2; DMSO, 3) complexes. These organometallic species, potentially able to interact with cell membrane organic cation transporters (OCT), violating some of the classical rules for antitumor activity of cisplatin analogues, were evaluated for their cytotoxicity. Interestingly, despite both complexes 2 and 3 resulting in greater cell uptake than cisplatin in selected tumor cell lines, only 3 showed comparable or higher antitumor activity. General low cytotoxicity of complex 2 in the tested cell lines (SH-SY5Y, SK-OV-3, Hep-G2, Caco-2, HeLa, MCF-7, MG-63, ZL-65) appeared to depend on its stability towards solvolysis in neutral water, as assessed by NMR monitoring. Differently, the [Pt(η¹-C₂H₄OMe)(DMSO)(phen)]⁺ (3) complex was easily hydrolyzed in neutral water, resulting in a comparable or higher cytotoxicity in cancer cells with respect to cisplatin. Further, both IC₅₀ values and the uptake profiles of the active complex appeared quite different in the used cell lines, suggesting the occurrence of diversified biological effects. Nevertheless, further studies on the metabolism of complex 3 should be performed before planning its possible use in tissue- and tumor-specific drug design.