Since anthrax is an acute infectious disease, detection and neutralization of the toxins of pathogenic Bacillus anthracis are of great importance. The critical role of protective antigen (PA) component of tripartite anthrax toxin in toxin entry into the host cell cytosol provided a great deal of effort to generate monoclonal antibodies against this constitute. Regarding the importance of anthrax detection/neutralization and unique physicochemical and pharmacological features of VHHs as single domain antibodies, the present study aimed to generate VHHs against the receptor binding domain of PA, termed PAD4. After camel immunization, a gene repertoire of VHH fragments with a diversity of 4.7×108 clones was produced, followed by constructing a VHH phage display library. A stringent successive biopanning was then carried out to isolate the phages displaying high affinity VHHs against PAD4.Polyclonal and monoclonal Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) verified binding specificity of phages to the target protein. Modeling of VHHs together with the docking simulation studies, illustrated the binding site of antibodies on antigen. Docking analysis revealed that all selected VHHs potently cover the key functional residues of PAD4. Since the selected VHHs could cover and block the receptor binding loops of PA, they could be proposed as hopeful anti-Anthrax candidates.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2018.03.034 | DOI Listing |
Viruses
December 2024
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Otago, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand.
Coliphage N4 is a representative species of the family of bacteriophages. Originally structurally studied in 2008, the capsid structure was solved to 14 Å to reveal an interesting arrangement of Ig-like decoration proteins across the surface of the capsid. Herein, we present a high-resolution N4 structure, reporting a 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPharmaceutics
January 2025
Physics Department and i3N, University of Aveiro, Campus de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal.
Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) are advanced materials that combine the unique properties of magnetic materials and nanoscale dimensions, enabling a wide range of applications in biomedicine, environmental science, and information technology. This review provides a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the fundamental principles, characterization techniques, and diverse applications of MNPs, with a focus on their nanoscale magnetic properties, such as superparamagnetism, single-domain behavior, and surface effects. It also delves into their classification and the critical role of parameters like magnetic anisotropy and blocking temperature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPharmaceutics
January 2025
Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Trieste, Piazzale Europa 1, 34127 Trieste, Italy.
This study investigates the preparation of coamorphous systems composed entirely of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), namely praziquantel, niclosamide, and mebendazole. The objective was to formulate and characterize binary and ternary coamorphous systems to evaluate their structural, thermal, and stability properties. Ten different mixtures (binary and ternary) were designed through a mixture design approach and prepared using a sustainable, one-step neat grinding process in a lab-scale vibrational mill.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPathogens
January 2025
National Reference Laboratory for Animal Schistosomiasis, Key Laboratory of Animal Parasitology of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Shanghai Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shanghai 200241, China.
Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease and the second most common parasitic disease after malaria. While praziquantel remains the primary treatment, concerns about drug resistance highlight the urgent need for new drugs and effective vaccines to achieve sustainable control. Previous proteomic studies from our group revealed that the expression of glycosyltransferase and nicastrin as proteins was higher in single-sex males than mated males, suggesting their critical roles in parasite reproduction and their potential as vaccine candidates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSensors (Basel)
January 2025
College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
Domain-generalizable re-identification (DG Re-ID) aims to train a model on one or more source domains and evaluate its performance on unseen target domains, a task that has attracted growing attention due to its practical relevance. While numerous methods have been proposed, most rely on discriminative or contrastive learning frameworks to learn generalizable feature representations. However, these approaches often fail to mitigate shortcut learning, leading to suboptimal performance.
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