Management of patient with Lupus Nephritis (LN) continues to remain a challenge for the treating physicians because of considerable morbidity and even mortality. The search of biomarkers in serum and urine is a focus of researchers to unravel new targets for therapy. In the present study, the utility of NMR-based serum metabolomics has been evaluated for the first time in discriminating LN patients from non-nephritis lupus patients (SLE) and further to get new insights into the underlying disease processes for better clinical management. Metabolic profiling of sera obtained from 22 SLE patients, 40 LN patients and 30 healthy controls (HC) were performed using high resolution 1D¹H-CPMG and diffusion edited NMR spectra to identify the potential molecular biomarkers. Using multivariate analysis, we could distinguish SLE and LN patients from HC and LN from SLE patients. Compared to SLE patients, the LN patients had increased serum levels of lipid metabolites (including LDL/VLDL lipoproteins), creatinine and decreased levels of acetate. Our results revealed that metabolic markers especially lipids and acetate derived from NMR spectroscopy has high sensitivity and specificity to distinguish LN among SLE patients and has the potential to be a useful adjunctive tool in diagnosis and clinical management of LN.

Metabolomics is an analytical approach to metabolism and involves quantitative and comparative analysis of low-molecular-weight metabolites in body fluids or cellular/tissues extracts. Owing to its ability to reveal disease-specific metabolic patterns or metabolic changes produced in response to a therapeutic intervention; it is gaining widespread applications virtually in all aspects of biomedical and pharmaceutical research pertaining to human healthcare management. It has also started playing a strategic role in pharmacological and toxicological research for evaluating therapeutic efficacy/safety of promising drug candidates either alone or in conjunction with other omics tools such as genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics. The metabolic profiling capabilities of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy along with pattern recognition methods have successfully been applied for identifying a diagnostic panel of biomarkers, evaluating drug efficacy/safety, screening toxicity and disease mechanism. Particularly, the interest in applying NMR-based metabolomics for the assessment of therapeutic efficacy and safety is increasing among drug researchers and drug regulators owing to its nondestructive, non-selective and minimal sample preparation requirement. On top of this, it offers the potential for high-throughput (i.e. >100 samples a day is attainable) and provides highly reproducible results. In this review, we will discuss some of the recent developments related to NMR based metabolomics followed by some recent literature examples to highlight its potential in (a) the evaluation of therapeutic efficacy and safety of lead discovery compounds, (b) monitoring disease status and recovery after treatment and (c) identification and evaluation of biomarkers of systemic/organ-specific toxicity. Additionally, the review will also highlight its role to facilitate clinical trial testing and improve post-approval drug monitoring.

The review highlights the significance of mulberry fruits in both chemical and biological sagacity and their role as antioxidant, anticancer, antidiabetic, hepatoprotective, neuroprotective, anti-inflammatory, antiobesity, hypolipidemic, and antibacterial. Besides, having phytochemicals induced biological pathways and nutritional value. Although a number of mulberry fruits species available in nature, the review elucidates the specific role of Morus alba, Morus nigra, Morus rubra, whose functions in living systems are poorly implicit. Many Pharmacological properties of mulberry fruits which are discovered in the recent past for therapeutic purposes also highlighted. Further, ethnopharmacological relevance, medicinal aspects, and bioavailability of mulberry fruits are discussed in detail.