Synthesis of carbon dots from spent coffee grounds: transforming waste into potential biomedical tools.

Carbon dots (CDs) are small-sized, spherical nanoparticles presenting amorphous carbon cores with nanocrystalline regions of a graphitic structure. They show unique properties such as high aqueous solubility, robust chemical inertness, and non-toxicity and can be manufactured at a relatively low cost. They are also well known for outstanding fluorescence tunability and resistance to photobleaching.

Do blood contamination reduction devices work? A single institution comparison.

We compare two initial specimen diversion devices evaluated over 3 months to investigate their utility in lowering blood culture contamination rates at or below 1%. Overall contamination rates during trial periods were 2.46% and 2.

A multiple in silico program approach for the prediction of mutagenicity from chemical structure.

We have conducted an evaluation of three of the most widely used commercial toxicity prediction programs, Toxicity Prediction by Komputer Assisted Technology (TOPKAT), Deductive Estimation of Risk from Existing Knowledge (DEREK) for Windows (DfW) and CASETOX. The three programs were evaluated for their ability to predict Ames test mutagenicity using 520 proprietary drug candidate (Test set 1) and 94 commercial (Test set 2) compounds. The study demonstrates that these three commercially available programs are useful, with limitations in their ability to predict mutagenicity over a wide range of chemical space, i.

Role of predictive metabolism and toxicity modeling in drug discovery--a summary of some recent advancements.

In this article, we discuss recent advances and selected publications in the area of computer-based (in silico) metabolism and toxicity prediction, and comment on the opportunities for prediction of metabolism-based toxicity. The article also discusses the growing interest and importance of in silico prediction of metabolism and toxicity as tools to assist in library design and lead optimization. In addition, we consider the status of commercial metabolism and toxicity databases, and the need for future improvement, since data is often from older studies and from structures not typically considered as 'drug-like'.