Repeated dose 28-days oral toxicity study of Carica papaya L. leaf extract in Sprague Dawley rats

Carica papaya L. leaves have been used in ethnomedicine for the treatment of fevers and cancers. Despite its benefits, very few studies on their potential toxicity have been described. The aim of the present study was to characterize the chemical composition of the leaf extract from 'Sekaki' C. papaya cultivar by UPLC-TripleTOF-ESI-MS and to investigate the sub-acute oral toxicity in Sprague Dawley rats at doses of 0.01, 0.14 and 2 g/kg by examining the general behavior, clinical signs, hematological parameters, serum biochemistry and histopathology changes. A total of twelve compounds consisting of one piperidine alkaloid, two organic acids, six malic acid derivatives, and four flavonol glycosides were characterized or tentatively identified in the C. papaya leaf extract. In the sub-acute study, the C. papaya extract did not cause mortality nor were treatment-related changes in body weight, food intake, water level, and hematological parameters observed between treatment and control groups. Some biochemical parameters such as the total protein, HDL-cholesterol, AST, ALT and ALP were elevated in a non-dose dependent manner. Histopathological examination of all organs including liver did not reveal morphological alteration. Other parameters showed non-significant differences between treatment and control groups. The present results suggest that C. papaya leaf extract at a dose up to fourteen times the levels employed in practical use in traditional medicine in Malaysia could be considered safe as a medicinal agent.     

Spectrofluorimetric and Spectrophotometric Stability‐Indicating Methods for the Analysis of Veralipride in Presence of Its Degradants and in Spiked Human Plasma

Spectrofluorimetric and spectrophotometric stability‐indicating methods were developed and validated for analysis of veralipride (Ver) in presence of its hydrolytic and oxidative degradants. The spectrofluorimetric method was based on direct measurement of the intrinsic fluorescence of Ver at 366 nm after excitation at 299 nm using sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) as micelle enhancer. The fluorescence intensity plot was linear over the concentration range 1.0–10.0 µg·mL^?1. The high sensitivity of the method allowed its successful application to the analysis of Ver in spiked human plasma. Two other methods were developed. They are based on the oxidative coupling reaction of Ver with 3‐methyl benzothiazolin‐2‐one hydrazone (MBTH) hydrochloride in presence of ceric ammonium sulphate in an acidic medium. The first method depends on spectrophotometric measurement of the stable green colored oxidative coupling product at 660 nm. The different experimental parameters affecting the reaction were optimized. Linearity range is 10.0–100.0 µg·mL^?1. The second method depends on a fluorescence quenching effect of Ver on the fluorescence of Ce³⁺. The difference in fluorescence intensity was measured at 380 nm after excitation at 300 nm. This method is applicable over the concentration ranges 0.25–2.50 µg·mL^?1. The methods were validated according to the ICH guidelines. They were successfully applied for the analysis of Ver in drug substance, drug product and in laboratory prepared mixtures containing different percentages of hydrolytic and oxidative degradants.     

Synthetic studies towards the pectenotoxins: a review

In this article we provide an overview of synthetic studies towards pectenotoxins (PTXs) that have been reported by several research groups. The difficulties encountered in the synthesis of these series of polyketides are highlighted by the fact that only one total synthesis of PTX4 and PTX8 has been completed to date. The strategies used in the critical bond forming steps and the introduction of key stereogenic centres are compared and contrasted.     

A new solution algorithm for improving performance of ant colony optimization

This study proposes an improved solution algorithm using ant colony optimization (ACO) for finding global optimum for any given test functions. The procedure of the ACO algorithms simulates the decision-making processes of ant colonies as they forage for food and is similar to other artificial intelligent techniques such as Tabu search, Simulated Annealing and Genetic Algorithms. ACO algorithms can be used as a tool for optimizing continuous and discrete mathematical functions. The proposed algorithm is based on each ant searches only around the best solution of the previous iteration with β. The proposed algorithm is called as ACORSES, an abbreviation of ACO Reduced SEarch Space. β is proposed for improving ACO’s solution performance to reach global optimum fairly quickly. The ACORSES is tested on fourteen mathematical test functions taken from literature and encouraging results were obtained. The performance of ACORSES is compared with other optimization methods. The results showed that the ACORSES performs better than other optimization algorithms, available in literature in terms of minimum values of objective functions and number of iterations.     

An online nano-LC-ESI-FTICR-MS method for comprehensive characterization of endogenous fragments from amyloid β and amyloid precursor protein in human and cat cerebrospinal fluid

Amyloid precursor protein (APP) is the precursor protein to amyloid β (Aβ), the main constituent of senile plaques in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Endogenous Aβ peptides reflect the APP processing, and greater knowledge of different APP degradation pathways is important to understand the mechanism underlying AD pathology. When one analyzes longer Aβ peptides by low-energy collision-induced dissociation tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), mainly long b-fragments are observed, limiting the possibility to determine variations such as amino acid variants or post-translational modifications (PTMs) within the N-terminal half of the peptide. However, by using electron capture dissociation (ECD), we obtained a more comprehensive sequence coverage for several APP/Aβ peptide species, thus enabling a deeper characterization of possible variants and PTMs. Abnormal APP/Aβ processing has also been described in the lysosomal storage disease Niemann-Pick type C and the major large animal used for studying this disease is cat. By ECD MS/MS, a substitution of Asp7 → Glu in cat Aβ was identified. Further, sialylated core 1 like O-glycans at Tyr10, recently discovered in human Aβ (a previously unknown glycosylation type), were identified also in cat cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). It is therefore likely that this unusual type of glycosylation is common for (at least) species belonging to the magnorder Boreoeutheria. We here describe a detailed characterization of endogenous APP/Aβ peptide species in CSF by using an online top-down MS-based method.     

Calculating the probability characteristics of a boundary functional of a semi-continuous random process with reflecting and delaying screens

In this paper, the semi-continuous random process with reflecting and delaying screens which plays an important role in stock control theory is constructed. Furthermore, the distribution function, its Laplace transform and numerical characteristics of the boundary functional γ₁ of the process where γ₁ is the first reflection moment of the process is calculated. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.