Recent Drug-Repurposing-Driven Advances in the Discovery of Novel Antibiotics.

Drug repurposing is a safe and successful pathway to speed up the novel drug discovery and development processes compared with de novo drug discovery approaches. Drug repurposing uses FDA-approved drugs and drugs that failed in clinical trials, which have detailed information on potential toxicity, formulation, and pharmacology. Technical advancements in the informatics, genomics, and biological sciences account for the major success of drug repurposing in identifying secondary indications of existing drugs.

Novel hybrid biosorbents of agar: Swelling behaviour, heavy metal ions and dye removal efficacies.

Agar based hybrid biosorbents were synthesized by free radical copolymerization of acrylamide, NN'-methylenebisacrylamide (NN'MBAAm) on the agar backbone in presence of free radical initiator (ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN)) via oxidation, grafting and crosslinking reactions. The resultant hybrid materials have been characterized by FTIR spectroscopy, elemental analysis, thermal analysis (TGA/DTA), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) taking agar as a reference. The swelling responses of hybrid materials have been extensively studied with various pH, time, temperature and ionic strength [NaCl] of the solution.