Spiritual Health and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impacts on Orthodox Christianity Devotion Practices, Rituals, and Religious Pilgrimages.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on multiple aspects of physical and social health, including spiritual and religious dimensions, has been discussed not only by numerous theologians, scientists, and politicians, but also by millions of believers of all faiths worldwide. The pandemic seems to have exerted a significant impact on religious practices. Massive gatherings of devoted and faithful people have been strongly discouraged and even openly banned.

Oxime ligation in acetic acid: efficient synthesis of aminooxy-peptide conjugates.

Oxime ligation is a powerful tool in various bioconjugation strategies. Nevertheless, high reaction rates and quantitative yields are typically reported for aldehyde-derived compounds. In contrary, keto groups react much slower, with quantitative yields achieved at 5 h for low-molecular weight compounds and more than 15 h for polymers or dendrimers.

Creatinyl amino acids: new hybrid compounds with neuroprotective activity.

Prolonged oral creatine administration resulted in remarkable neuroprotection in experimental models of brain stroke. However, because of its polar nature creatine has poor ability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier (BBB) without specific creatine transporter (CRT). Thus, synthesis of hydrophobic derivatives capable of crossing the BBB by alternative pathway is of great importance for the treatment of acute and chronic neurological diseases including stroke, traumatic brain injury and hereditary CRT deficiency.

[GnRH analogues containing SV-40 virus T-antigen nuclear localization sequence].

To improve the efficiency of anticancer drugs due to their delivery to intracellular targets a set of GnRH analogues containing nuclear localization signal (NLS) of SV-40 virus large T-antigen have been synthesized. NLS was attached to the parent molecule via ε-amino group of D-Lysine in position 1 or 6 of peptide sequence using orthogonal protection strategy. The biological activity studies revealed that incorporation of NLS moiety significantly increases cytotoxic activity of palmitoyl-containing GnRH analogues in vitro.