Author: Biotech Express

Dr Seema Pavgi Upadhye  |  Updated on July 16   We are witnessing COVID-19 pandemic since September 2019 when China first imposed lockdown and then every country had to do this because of growing number of cases and mortality. Since January, scientists all over the world are trying to develop a vaccine or cure against this deadly virus but there is no hope yet. Here, we are providing a list of drugs from India that are being considered for COVID-19 treatment with complete status till date. Note: This article does not endorse any drug/therapy for COVID-19 or any other condition. 1.…

by Anonymous Writer Summary Does FDA and WHO acted purely on the basis of reports of journals? These reports were challenged several times but FDA or WHO were not whistleblowers Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ/CQ) is the first drug that was accepted by global scientific community as a possible treatment for COVID-19. Soon after many countries started to stockpile the drug and India in this situation distributed it to many countries. This is because India is biggest manufacturer in world and supplies it on cheaper price. One more drug Remedesvir was also proposed as cure but could not do well in clinical trials,…

by Rama S Verma and Steffi SV Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Chennai, 600036, India. Corresponding e-mail: vermars@iitm.ac.in About the Author                    Rama S. Verma is Professor in Department of Biotechnology, IIT-Madras. He has authored more than 130 publications in several journals, has many books as author and co-author and is a fellow of reputed Indian societies. His team at the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras, are researching on stem cell proliferation related studies and discovering novel treatment that uses a new class of molecules called immunotoxins, that could…

by Kamal Pratap Singh, Email-kamal9871@gmail.com Summary – Preprints publish articles without peer review. – Important articles are retracting from these servers too. – Unlike normal journal which shows only published articles, preprints accumulates unpublished and unverified research on their servers which becomes available for public interpretation. Introduction Like we post updates on fb/Ln/Tw etc. and expect audience’s response, preprints like bioRxiv/medRxiv platforms posts scientific research papers and leave it on readers to understand, accept or reject the research. Earlier it was task of peer reviewers who used to carefully analyze the study and then either approve study if it is…

By Seema Pavgi Upadhye Dr Peter Daszak, who is preparing the next Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’  (IPBES) assessment, writes that rampant deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of agriculture, intensive farming, mining and infrastructure development as well as the exploitation of wild species, all have created a “perfect storm” for the spillover of diseases. These activities can cause pandemics by bringing more people into contact and conflicts with animals, from which 70% of emerging human diseases originate. The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled us to think again that whether this all is due to heavy destruction of the natural world…

Sukanya Chakraborty1 , Aparajita Chattopadhyay2 1 Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Berhampur 2 International Institute of Population Sciences, Mumbai Corresponding e-mail: sukanya17@iiserbpr.ac.in Introduction The Novel Coronavirus 2019 has taken the world by a storm and brought life to a standstill. Caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the disease presents as mildly symptomatic in most afflicted individuals, with possibilities of complications in those with co-morbidities. The devastation does not end there. The socioeconomic landscape of the world has suffered irrevocable damages, particularly, in developing nations such as ours. A dearth of essential resources and an ineffective workforce, make it unlikely…

By Hridya Susan Varughese, PhD scholar, Veterinary College, Bengaluru- 560024 Disinfection is the simplest way of preventing infections by eliminating pathogens. The ongoing corona viral pandemic is a steady reminder of its importance. In principle, it has been in practice since centuries with sulphur compounds being used for disinfection fromthe 18th century plague outbreaks. While use of copper, mercury, salts, alkalis, acids and plant extracts were chemical methods, filtration, burning, fumigation and burial were physical methods. Closer to the 19th century, tyndallisation and autoclaving gained momentum focusing on bacterial spores 1 .The existence of micro-organisms explored by Louis Pasteur…

by Kamal Pratap Singh, Managing Editor, Biotech Express Corresponding author: kamal9871@gmail.com In India, ‘Lockdown’ was imposed on March 21, 2020 but a team of scientists headed by Prof Shailendra Saxena from KGMU performed the best possible experiments in early January, as soon as World Health Organization published out first Disease Outbreak News on the new virus, with a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, to know about the genetic and biochemical machinery and tried to get as much information as possible for the risk assessment and making a vaccine for prevention. In his pioneer original research paper from India,…

By Kamal Pratap Singh and Seema Pavgi Upadhye Introduction India is a country of around 1.3 billion living in as congested places like Dharavi in Mumbai to spacious lush green Lutyen’s zone of Delhi. Handling world’s second most population is not an easy task but the situation till now is under the control. However, there are few who speculate that we have just postponed the pandemic which will come after lifting up the lockdown or may recur like other viral infections. There has been around two months (in India) since the lockdown which has led life to travel on road.…

by S. Dravida, PhD Founder and CEO, Transcell Biologics World Health Organization (WHO) has named SARS-CoV2 (a new format of corona virus) as COVID-19 while declaring it as causative agent of the pandemic outbreak in 2020 with roots from China. According to a recent publication of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), currently, there are no approved stem cell-based approaches neither for prevention nor treatment of COVID-19 infection. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are being researched and trialed as one of the therapeutic tools in the treatment of COVID19. The hypothesis on which MSCs are being trialed is that…