Lung Organoids: Systematic Review of Recent Advancements and its Future Perspectives

Organoids are essentially an in vitro (lab-grown) three-dimensional tissue culture system model that meticulously replicates the structure and physiology of human organs. A few of the present applications of organoids are in the basic biological research area, molecular medicine and pharmaceutical drug testing. Organoids are crucial in connecting the gap between animal models and human clinical trials during the drug discovery process, which significantly lowers the time duration and cost associated with each stage of testing. Likewise, they can be used to understand cell-to-cell interactions, a crucial aspect of tissue biology and regeneration, and to model disease pathogenesis at various stages of the disease. Lung organoids can be utilized to explore numerous pathophysiological activities of a lung since they share similarities with its function. Researchers have been trying to recreate the complex nature of the lung by developing various "Lung organoids" models.This article is a systematic review of various developments of lung organoids and their potential progenitors. It also covers the in-depth applications of lung organoids for the advancement of translational research. The review discusses the methodologies to establish different types of lung organoids for studying the regenerative capability of the respiratory system and comprehending various respiratory diseases.Respiratory diseases are among the most common worldwide, and the growing burden must be addressed instantaneously. Lung organoids along with diverse bio-engineering tools and technologies will serve as a novel model for studying the pathophysiology of various respiratory diseases and for drug screening purposes.

Latent Tuberculosis: Challenges in Diagnosis and Treatment, Perspectives, and the Crucial Role of Biomarkers

Tuberculosis (TB) is the major cause of morbidity and mortality globally, which is caused by a single infectious agent Mycobacterium tuberculosis. For years, many TB control programmes are established for effective diagnosis and treatment of active TB cases, but these approaches alone are insufficient for TB eradication. This review aims to discourse on the crucial management of latent tuberculosis infection. This review will first summarize the current status, and methods for diagnosing latent tuberculosis then describes the challenges involved in the diagnosis and treatment of latent tuberculosis, and finally encounters the purpose of biomarkers as predicting tool in latent tuberculosis.

Susceptibility of SARS Coronavirus-2 infection in domestic and wild animals: a systematic review

Animals and viruses have constantly been co-evolving under natural circumstances and pandemic like situations. They harbour harmful viruses which can spread easily. In the recent times we have seen pandemic like situations being created as a result of the spread of deadly and fatal viruses. Coronaviruses (CoVs) are one of the wellrecognized groups of viruses. There are four known genera of Coronavirus family namely, alpha (α), beta (β), gamma (γ), and delta (δ). Animals have been infected with CoVs belonging to all four genera. In the last few decades the world has witnessed an emergence of severe acute respiratory syndromes which had created a pandemic like situation such as SARS CoV, MERS-CoV. We are currently in another pandemic like situation created due to the uncontrolled spread of a similar coronavirus namely SARSCoV-2. These findings are based on a small number of animals and do not indicate whether animals can transmit disease to humans. Several mammals, including cats, dogs, bank voles, ferrets, fruit bats, hamsters, mink, pigs, rabbits, racoon dogs, and white-tailed deer, have been found to be infected naturally by the virus. Certain laboratory discoveries revealed that animals such as cats, ferrets, fruit bats, hamsters, racoon dogs, and white-tailed deer can spread the illness to other animals of the same species. This review article gives insights on the current knowledge about SARS-CoV-2 infection and development in animals on the farm and in domestic community and their impact on society.

Structural basis for the inhibition of SARS-CoV2 main protease by Indian medicinal plant-derived antiviral compounds

A novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) has caused a major outbreak in humans around the globe, and it became a severe threat to human healthcare than all other infectious diseases. Researchers were urged to discover and test various approaches to control and prevent such a deadly disease. Considering the emergency and necessity, we screened reported antiviral compounds present in the traditional Indian medicinal plants for the inhibition of SARS-CoV2 main protease. In this study, we used molecular docking to screen 41 reported antiviral compounds that exist in Indian medicinal plants and shown amentoflavone from the plant Torreyanucifera with a higher docking score. Furthermore, we performed a 40 ns atomic molecular dynamics simulation and free binding energy calculations to explore the stability of the top five protein–ligand complexes. Through the article, we insist that the amentoflavone, hypericin and Torvoside H from the traditional Indian medicinal plants may be used as a potential inhibitor of SARS-CoV2 main protease and further biochemical experiments could shed light on understanding the mechanism of inhibition by these plant-derived antiviral compounds.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma