Microbiological Decontamination of Water: Improving the Solar Disinfection Technique (SODIS) with the Use of Nontoxic Vital Dye Methylene Blue.

Rational use of water is a major challenge for governments and global organizations, with easy and inexpensive interventions being sought by communities that are not supplied with drinking water. In this context, solar disinfection (SODIS) has shown great efficiency for water disinfection. To speed up the process and improve inactivation, we studied the effects of methylene blue (MB) as a photodynamic agent because of its ability to absorb visible light (red wavelength) and generate singlet oxygen as a reactive species, thereby inactivating bacteria and viruses present in water.

Effect of the FE chelation by 2,2'-dipyridyl in the doxorubicin-induced lethality in breast tumor cell lines.

Breast cancer cells may exhibit changes in iron homeostasis, which results in increased labile iron pool (LIP) levels. Several studies highlight the crucial role of high LIP levels in the maintenance of tumor cell physiology. Iron chelators have been tested in anticancer therapy in combination with chemotherapeutic agents, to improve drug efficacy.

New insights on how nucleotide excision repair could remove DNA adducts induced by chemotherapeutic agents and psoralens plus UV-A (PUVA) in Escherichia coli cells.

Chemotherapeutic agents such as mitomycin C or nitrogen mustards induce DNA inter-strand cross-links (ICL) and are highly toxic, thus constituting an useful tool to treat some human degenerative diseases, such as cancer. Additionally, psoralens plus UV-A (PUVA), which also induce ICL, find use in treatment of patients afflicted with psoriasis and vitiligo. The repair of DNA ICL generated by different molecules involves a number of multi-step DNA repair pathways.