In Vitro Anticancer Activity of Methanolic Extract of Justicia adhatoda Leaves with Special Emphasis on Human Breast Cancer Cell Line

Natural products are being targeted as alternative anticancer agents due to their non-toxic and safe nature. The present study was conducted to explore the in vitro anticancer potential of Justicia adhatoda (J. adhatoda) leaf extract. The methanolic leaf extract was prepared, and the phytochemicals and antioxidant potential were determined by LCMS analysis and DPPH radical scavenging assay, respectively. A docking study performed with five major alkaloidal phytoconstituents showed that they had a good binding affinity towards the active site of NF-κB. Cell viability assay was carried out in five different cell lines, and the extract exhibited the highest cytotoxicity in MCF-7, a breast cancer cell line. Extract-treated cells showed a significant increase in nitric oxide and reactive oxygen species production. Cell cycle analysis showed an arrest in cell growth at the Sub-G0 phase. The extract successfully inhibited cell migration and colony formation and altered mitochondrial membrane potential. The activities of superoxide dismutase and glutathione were also found to decrease in a dose-dependent manner. The percentage of apoptotic cells was found to increase in a dose-dependent manner in MCF-7 cells. The expressions of caspase-3, Bax, and cleaved-PARP were increased in extract-treated cells. An increase in the expression of NF-κB was found in the cytoplasm in extract-treated cells. J. adhatoda leaf extract showed a potential anticancer effect in MCF-7 cells.     

Efficacious and sustained release of an anticancer drug mitoxantrone from new covalent organic frameworks using protein corona

Solid porous and crystalline covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are characterized by their higher specific BET surface areas and functional pore walls, which allow the adsorption of various bioactive molecules inside the porous lattices. We have introduced a perylene-based COF, PER@PDA-COF-1, which acts as an effective porous volumetric reservoir for an anticancer drug, mitoxantrone (MXT). The drug-loaded COF (MXT–PER@PDA-COF-1) exhibited zero cellular release of MXT towards cancer cells, which can be attributed to the strong intercalation between the anthracene-dione motif of the drug and the perylene-based COF backbone. Here, we have introduced a strategy involving the serum-albumin-triggered intracellular release of mitoxantrone from MXT–PER@PDA-COF-1. The serum albumin acts as an exfoliating agent and as a colloidal stabilizer in PBS medium (pH = 7.4), rapidly forming a protein corona around the exfoliated COF crystallites and inducing the sustained release of MXT from the COF into tumorigenic cells.

Solid porous and crystalline covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are characterized by their higher specific BET surface areas and functional pore walls, which allow the adsorption of various bioactive molecules inside the porous lattices.     

On Some Properties of (Θ+) Excited States

The mass splitting and the decay width of pentaquark (Θ⁺) at the higher angular momentum states have been investigated in the framework of flux tube model considering the diquark-diquark-antiquark configuration for Θ⁺ along with statistical model. A quasi particle model for diquark has been considered. The Regge trajectory of Θ⁺ has also been investigated with interesting some observations.     

On the two dimensional effective electron mass in quantum wells,inversion layers and NIPI superlattices of Kane type semiconductors in the presence of strong light waves: Simplified theory and relative comparison

An attempt is made to study the two dimensional (2D) effective electron mass (EEM) in quantum wells (Qws), inversion layers (ILs) and NIPI superlattices of Kane type semiconductors in the presence of strong external photoexcitation on the basis of a newly formulated electron dispersion laws within the framework of k.p. formalism. It has been found, taking InAs and InSb as examples, that the EEM in Qws, ILs and superlattices increases with increasing concentration, light intensity and wavelength of the incident light waves, respectively and the numerical magnitudes in each case is band structure dependent. The EEM in ILs is quantum number dependent exhibiting quantum jumps for specified values of the surface electric field and in NIPI superlattices; the same is the function of Fermi energy and the subband index characterizing such 2D structures. The appearance of the humps of the respective curves is due to the redistribution of the electrons among the quantized energy levels when the quantum numbers corresponding to the highest occupied level changes from one fixed value to the others. Although the EEM varies in various manners with all the variables as evident from all the curves, the rates of variations totally depend on the specific dispersion relation of the particular 2D structure. Under certain limiting conditions, all the results as derived in this paper get transformed into well known formulas of the EEM and the electron statistics in the absence of external photo-excitation and thus confirming the compatibility test. The results of this paper find three applications in the field of microstructures.     

Delineating incoherent non-Markovian dynamics using quantum coherence

We introduce a method of characterization of non-Markovianity using coherence of a system interacting with the environment. We show that under the allowed incoherent operations, monotonicity of a valid coherence measure is affected due to non-Markovian features of the system–environment evolution. We also define a measure to quantify non-Markovianity of the underlying dynamics based on the non-monotonic behavior of the coherence measure. We investigate our proposed non-Markovianity marker in the behavior of dephasing and dissipative dynamics for one and two qubit cases. We also show that our proposed measure captures the back-flow of information from the environment to the system and compatible with well known distinguishability criteria of non-Markovianity.     

Existence of Surface Waves and Band Gaps in Periodic Heterogeneous Half-spaces

We find a sufficient condition for the existence of surface (Rayleigh) waves based on the Rayleigh-Ritz variational method. When specialized to a homogeneous half-space, the sufficient condition recovers the known criterion for the existence of subsonic surface waves. A simple existence criterion in terms of material properties is obtained for periodic half-spaces of general anisotropic materials. Further, we numerically compute the dispersion relation of the surface waves for a half-space of periodic laminates of two materials and demonstrate the existence of surface wave band gaps.     

Application of Polyphosphoric Acid‐Mediated Acyl Migration for Regiospecific Synthesis of Diverse 2‐Acylpyrroles from Chalcones

A metal‐free approach for the synthesis of 2‐acylpyrroles is reported in this paper. Synthesis of the target molecule started from chalcones and was carried out in two steps. Initial step involved the conversion of chalcones to corresponding 4‐substituted‐3‐acylpyrroles by reaction with TosMIC. In the subsequent step, target molecules were obtained in modest to good yields by polyphosphoric acid‐mediated acyl rearrangement of 3‐acylpyrroles to their 2‐acyl congeners. The crucial final step was amenable to diverse substitutions on pyrrole ring. Preliminary experiment for the determination of mechanism indicated the involvement of acylium ion.