Alireza Ghassempour

• PhD, Professor
• Academic Member at Medicinal Plants and Drugs Research Institute

Two factors frequently impede accurate bacterial identification using matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS): inadequate bacterial abundance in real samples and bacterial combinations. For MALDI-TOF MS analysis and libraries for bacterial identification, time-consuming culture procedures are nece...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive condition marked by multiple underlying mechanisms. Therefore, the investigation of natural products that can target multiple pathways presents a potential gate for the understanding and management of AD. This study aimed to assess the neuroprotective effects of the hydroalcoholic extract of Dracocephalum m...

It is believed that antivenoms play a crucial role in neutralizing venoms. However, uncontrolled clinical effects appear in patients stung by scorpions after the injection of antivenom. In this research, non-neutralized components of the venom of the Iranian scorpion Odonthobuthus doriae were analyzed after interacting with the commercial antivenom...

Purpose ITP is the most prevalent autoimmune blood disorder. The lack of predictive biomarkers for therapeutic response is a major challenge for physicians caring of chronic ITP patients. This study is aimed at identifying predictive biomarkers for drug therapy responses. Methods 2D gel electrophoresis (2-DE) was performed to find differentially e...

Background and Objectives: Plasma radiation is a widely used technique for sterilization or decontamination in various industries, as well as in some healthcare settings such as dentistry. The primary aim of this study was to assess the potential of plasma radiation to create a new population of Staphylococcus aureus cells with distinct characteris...

Safranal, as an aroma in saffron, is one of the cytotoxic compounds in saffron that causes cell death in triple-negative breast cancer cells. Our recent research reported the anti-cancer effects of safranal, which further demonstrated its impact on protein translation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and DNA fragmentation. To better understand the under...

Menthol in its L-isomer is a key flavoring additive mainly due to its cold-mimicking characteristics. Production of menthol in preferred L-isoform has been studied in different ways through cell-based or multiple-step biocatalyst processes. Herein, we introduce a single-step, cell-free reaction for (-)-menthol production. In this study, recombinant...

Brucellosis is considered to be a zoonotic infection with a predominant incidence in most parts of Iran that may even simply involve diagnostic laboratory personnel. In the present study, we apply matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) for rapid and reliable discrimination of Brucella abortus and...

Noscapine is an isolated compound from the opium poppy, with distinctive chiral structure and chemistry, interacts with other compounds due to having multiple π-acceptors, hydrogen bond acceptors, and ionic sites. Therefore, it has promising applicability for the enantioselective separation of a wide range of polar, acidic, basic, and neutral compo...

Scorpion venom is a complex secretory mixture of components with potential biological and physiological properties that attracted many researchers due to promising applications from clinical and pharmacological perspectives. In this study, we investigated the venom of the Iranian scorpion Hottentotta saulcyi (Simon, 1880) by applying mass-spectrome...

Many studies are focused on using plasma in mass spectrometry as an ionization source or postionization method. In this study, the effect of plasma treatment in the sample preparation step of desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) has been investigated. The plasma treatment of polar samples, including morphine, codeine, captopril, theophylline,...

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive subtype of breast cancer with no efficient treatment. Researchers have indicated the importance of quantitative approaches on proteome and different post-translation modifications studies both in diagnosis and treatment purposes. Sialic acid-containing glycopeptides (the sialiome) is one of thes...

In the present study, a series of novel Trp-Pro-Val containing peptides were prepared via solid-phase synthesis, and their structures were cyclized by a disulfide bridge, or modified by adding heterocycles of pyrazine, pyroglutamic acid, and 1,3,4-oxadiazoles to their N-terminus. These peptides were designed to antagonize gonadotropin-releasing hor...

The hydrogen/deuterium exchange (HDX) is a reliable method to survey the dynamic behavior of proteins and epitope mapping. Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization-Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) is a quantifying tool to assay for HDX in the protein of interest. We combined HDX-MALDI-TOF MS and molecular docking/MD simulation to...

Glutathione S- transferase P1 (GST- P1) is considered as a detoxification enzyme and can be upregulated in several cancers. Therefore, qualification and/or quantification of GST-P1 in biological fluids can be noteworthy in cancer diagnostic and/or prognostic methods. Whereas costly immunoassays methods are routinely used for clinical analysis, long...

Rationale: Surface functionalization is considered to be the foundation for developing nanomaterial applications in matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) analyses. However, the surface properties of nanostructures can influence their interaction with the analyte and consequently the mass data. In the present stud...

Over-consumption of antibiotics has led to antimicrobial resistance creating urgency to find fast and efficient techniques to monitor the level of antibiotics in the foods. The advantages of using aptamer for a variety of scientific challenges are becoming more abundant in different fields, making its applications more effective and cost-efficient....

Destruction caused by plant diseases is terrible. Mexican lime witches' broom (MLWB) is a phytoplasma disease, which has caused considerable damage in Mexican lime tree in southern parts of Iran. In order to protect the plant against this pathogen, it is required to apply an appropriate treatment to induce resistance. Moreover, for better comprehen...

To enhance protein identification in mass spectrometry systems, plasma can be applied in the sample preparation step in addition to conventional use, which improves the ionization process. In the present study, cold plasma technology is evaluated to achieve highly sensitive detection of low analyte concentrations. Plasma treatments are performed by...

This study aimed to investigate four of the eight PFN-1 mutations that are located near the actin-binding domain and determine the structural changes due to each mutant and unravel how these mutations alter protein structural behavior. Swapaa’s command in UCSF chimera for generating mutations, FTMAP were employed and the data was analyzed by RMSD,...

The snake venom gland is the place for the synthesis, storage, and secretion of a complex mixture of proteins and peptides, i.e., the venom. The morphology of the gland has been revealed by classical histology and microscopic studies. However, knowledge about the gland's cellular secretory and functional processes is still incomplete and has so far...

The production of high-quality purified virus particles in high quantities for vaccine preparation requires a scalable purification procedure in the downstream step. A purification scheme based on combined strong anion-exchange and size exclusion chromatography (2D-AEC-SEC) was developed for the production of non-structural protein-free foot and mo...

The hydrogen/deuterium exchange (HDX) is a reliable method to survey the dynamic behavior of proteins and epitope mapping. Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization-Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) is a quantifying tool to assay for HDX in the protein of interest. We combined HDX-MALDI-TOF MS and molecular docking/MD simulation to...

Recent success in studying the proteome, as a source of biomarkers, has completely changed our understanding of leukemia (blood cancer). The identification of differentially expressed proteins, such as relapse and drug resistance proteins involved in leukemia by using various ionization sources and mass analyzers of mass spectrometry techniques, ha...

Saw-scaled or carpet vipers (genus Echis) are considered to cause a higher global snakebite mortality than any other snake. Echis carinatus sochureki (ECS) is a widely distributed snake species, also found across the thirteen provinces of Iran, where it is assumed to be responsible for the most snakebite envenomings. Here, we collected the Iranian...

Rationale: Plasma-assisted ionization is widely used in mass spectrometry; in this study, a low-pressure glow discharge is introduced as a new method to improve the detection of large proteins, and bovine serum albumin (BSA) is used as a protein model. The treatment of analyte, matrix, and the matrix-analyte mixture is evaluated under optimal cond...

The metabolic stimulation induced by abiotic stress is an efficient strategy for the production of secondary metabolites in sterile and controlled plant cell, tissue, and organ cultures. Paclitaxel (taxol), one of the most widely used therapeutic compounds for the treatment of various cancers, is mainly produced through cell culture of the European...

Scorpions represent a venomous group of arachnids commonly recognized by the pair of grasping pedipalps out front, and a long segmented tail that arched upward over the back. They have been successful inhabitants of our planet for over 400 million years. The capacity to produce and deliver venom is a critical evolutionary innovation that helped the...

So far, no detailed view has been expressed regarding the interactions between vancomycin and racemic compounds including mandelic acid. In the current study, a chiral stationary phase was prepared by using 3‐aminopropyltriethoxysilane and succinic anhydride to graft carboxylated silica microspheres and subsequently by activating the carboxylic aci...

Protein A, a major cell wall component of Staphylococcus aureus, is one of the first immunoglobulin-binding proteins that is discovered about 80 years ago. However, a great deal of development in both purification methods and application of antibodies in treatment have been done. There are many publications based on the untargeted (size exclusion,...

The ability of mass spectrometry for discrimination between protein and peptide masses which are unique to specific pathogen provides an accurate and fast method for detection of different types of pathogens special viruses. Capsid proteins are specific to each virus and can be used as a biomarker for detection of this pathogen. On the other hand,...

New zwitterionic (ZIC) stationary phases (SPs) are synthesized with the click and conventional bonding of tyrosine to silica gel. Infrared spectra and elemental analysis demonstrate the successful click and conventional bonding of this ZIC group on silica particles by the surface coverage including 2.36 and 0.75 µm m⁻², respectively. Given the abov...

More than 85% of saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is producing in 22 regions of Iran. Quality control and its geographical effects are the main concern behind it. In this study, we developed a chromatographic fingerprint of 22 type saffron from 22 regions of Iran. Multivariate clustering methods of PCA and HCA are used for finding similarities and dissi...

Currently, there is growing interest in the degradation pathways of organic contaminants such as pesticides. In the case of pesticides, the determination of metabolites in agricultural products and environment is necessary as some of them could present similar toxicity to or even higher toxicity than the parent compound. The development of analytic...

Application of abiotic stress-inducing elicitors is one of the effective strategies in order to increase the production of secondary metabolites in plant tissues. Here, the effect of in vitro polyethylene glycol (PEG)-induced drought stress on morphological and biochemical changes as well as the production of paclitaxel and 10-deacetyl baccatin III...

Laparoscopic Gastric Plication (LGP) is a relatively new bariatric surgical procedure which no part of the stomach is removed. It is not clearly understood how LGP leads to fatty tissue reduction. We aimed to investigate the impact of LGP on serum proteome and understand molecular mechanisms of LGP-induced weight loss post-surgery. A Prospective ob...

Bariatric surgery is an effective treatment for morbid obesity with a sustained weight loss and improvements in metabolic syndrome. We present a label free quantitative shotgun proteomics approach to analyze the serum proteome of obese people who underwent Laparoscopic Gastric Plication (LGP) as a new bariatric surgery. Pre-surgery serum samples of...

A fast, selective and sensitive reversed-phased liquid chromatography coupled to ion-trap mass spectrometry has been developed to elucidate and confirm the diazinon metabolites with a wide range of polarity in the rice plant samples. Sample extraction and purification were performed with a QuEChERS-based (Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged, and...

Single amino acid mutations in profilin 1 (PFN1) have been found to cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Recently, we developed a mouse model for ALS using a PFN1 mutation (glycine 118 to valine, G118V), and we are now interested in understanding how PFN1 becomes toxically lethal with only one amino acid substitution. Therefore, we studied mu...

Concerns for the use of non-purified or incompletely purified inactivated foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccine, like difficulties for differentiation vaccinated from infected animals, can be a motivation in order to develop methods based on size exclusion chromatography (SEC). In this study, a two dimensional size exclusion chromatography (2D-SEC)...

The venom produced by snakes contains complex mixtures of pharmacologically active proteins and peptides which play a crucial role in the pathophysiology of snakebite diseases. The deep understanding of venom proteomes can help to improve the treatment of this "neglected tropical disease" (as expressed by WHO) and to develop new drugs. The most wid...

5-methylcytosine (5mC) is an epigenetic mark which has a profound effect on various fundamental processes in cells. In present study, at first Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography (HILIC) was compared with Reversed-Phase High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (RP-HPLC) based on their selectivity (α), retention factor (k), and resolution (R...

Resistance to antibiotics is an emerging and growing threat. To address this threat, attempts are being made by researchers to identify the Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) of bacteria. It is believed that unique combinations could be found among the VOCs produced by each microorganism. The current study aimed to identify and compare the VOCs of a...

Snake venoms as natural product are mixture of biological active peptides and proteins. They are showing numerous important physiological activities in apoptosis, neurotransmission, hemostasis and signal transduction. Among all snakes, Cobra is the medically most important group, whose envenomation results in the majority snakebite mortalities for...

Background : Diagnoses of respiratory tract infections usually happen in the late phase of the disease and usually result in reduction of the pathogen load after broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy, but not in eradication of the pathogen. The development of a non-invasive, fast, and accurate method to detect pathogens has always been of interest to r...

Background: Diagnoses of respiratory tract infections usually happen in the late phase of the disease and usually result in reduction of the pathogen load after broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy, but not in eradication of the pathogen. The development of a non-invasive, fast, and accurate method to detect pathogens has always been of interest to re...

Cyclotides are plant derived, cystine-knot stabilized peptides characterized by their natural abundance, sequence variability and structural plasticity. They are abundantly expressed in Rubiaceae, Psychotrieae in particular. Previously the cyclotide kalata B7 was identified to modulate the human oxytocin and vasopressin G protein-coupled receptors...

Background: Diagnoses of respiratory tract infections usually happen in the late phase of the disease and usually result in reduction of the pathogen load after broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy, but not in eradication of the pathogen. The development of a non-invasive, fast, and accurate method to detect pathogens has always been of interest to re...

Hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography on bare silica presents some benefits for analysis and purification of ionizable basic alkaloids. This method was used to separate five major opium alkaloids: morphine, codeine, thebaine, papaverine, and noscapine. Central composite design based on response surface methodology was applied for experiment...

An interesting mode of chromatography for preparation of pure enantiomers from pure samples is the method of stacked injection as a pseudocontinuous procedure. Maximum throughput and minimal production costs can be achieved by the use of total chiral column length in this mode of chromatography. To maximize sample loading, often touching bands of t...

The separation of a mixture containing five major opium alkaloids, namely morphine, codeine, thebaine, noscapine and papaverine has been investigated in hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) mode using five different stationary phases: bare silica, zwitterion, aminopropyl, diol and cyanopropyl. In order to propose the appropriate co...

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is a precious commodity with a high economic value for exporting countries such Iran. One of the major challenges of saffron cultivation is the lack of a reliable method of saffron secondary metabolites determination. This study is aimed to introduce a reliable and accurate method for determining the quality of saffron....

The rapid diagnosis of respiratory infections has always been an important goal for medical professionals, because rapid and accurate diagnosis leads to proper and timely treatment, and consequently, reduces the costs of incorrect and long-term treatments, and antibiotic resistance. The present study was conducted with the aim of detecting volatile...

Male factor infertility is involved in almost half of all infertile couples. Lack of the ejaculated sperm due to testicular malfunction has been reported in 6-10% of infertile, a condition named non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA). In this study, we investigated untargeted metabolomic profiling of the seminal plasma in NOA men using gas chromatograph...

Background: The current study was aimed at identifying theVOC of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. Methods: Standard strains of P. aeruginosa and S. aureus werecultured in nutrient agar for 20 hours at 37º C and then weresub-cultured onto tryptic soy broth (TSB) medium. Headspace analyses of mentioned bacterial samples were performe...

Surface functionalization strategies for targeting nanoparticles (NP) to specific organs, cells, or organelles, is the foundation for new applications of nanomedicine to drug delivery and biomedical imaging. Interaction of NPs with biological media leads to the formation of a biomolecular layer at the surface of NPs so called as “protein corona”. T...

During a decade and more since its discovery, the emerging physiological roles of ghrelin in mammalian are increasingly being introduced, proposing a critical need for its quantification in biological milieu. Here in, a simple and sensitive single-step method for extraction and quantification of ghrelin in human plasma was developed and validated u...

Profiling and monitoring concentrations of key hormones in body have long been one of the critical aims in clinical therapy. As a crucial hormone, identification and quantification of ghrelin is a fundamental, often key step in understanding human physiological mechanisms. Through the advances and improvements of different analytical techniques, gh...

Direct resolution of chiral compounds by liquid chromatography (LC) has been accepted as a leading method for separation of enantiomers in the pharmaceutical studies including physiological, toxicological, and clinical evaluations, as stipulated by FDA. This method possesses many advantages such as, high speed and small need for labor in comparison...

In this study, the treatment of pistachio nuts by Bacillus subtilis UTBSP1, a promising isolate to degrade aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), caused to reduce the growth of Aspergillus flavus R5 and AFB1 content on pistachio nuts. Fluorescence probes revealed that the cell free supernatant fluid from UTBSP1 affects spore viability considerably. Using high-perfor...

Nowadays nanoparticle technology is used on a large scale in industry. These compounds have a number of toxic effects from which one must take care to avoid side effects. Titanium oxide nanoparticle, (nano TiO2), is one such material. These materials are of interest because of their photocatalytic characteristics. They are being used in sanitary ma...

Indoxacarb is an active ingredient for crop protection and a chemical compound from the group of oxadiazines which is insoluble in water. The technical product is a 3:1 mixture of the (S)-enantiomer which is effective as an insecticide and the (R)-enantiomer is inactive. Recently there are some papers about enantioseparation and enantioselective de...

This work presents the untargeted metabolomic profiling of the seminal plasma of non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA) men using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). To this end, the seminal plasma of a total of 30 samples including 11 NOA men with TESE-negative (AZN), 9 NOA men with TESE-positive (AZP) and 10 fertile (F) healthy men (as contr...

Chromatographic method development for preparative targets is a time-consuming and subjective process. This can be particularly problematic because of the use of valuable samples for isolation and the large consumption of solvents in preparative scale. These processes could be improved by using statistical computations to save time, solvent and exp...

Cyclotides describe a unique cyclic peptide family that displays a broad range of biological activities including uterotonic, anti-bacteria, anti-cancer and anti-HIV. The vigno cyclotides consist of vigno 1-10 were reported recently from viola ignobilis. In the present study, we examined the effects of vigno 5, a natural cyclopeptide from Viola ign...

Curcumin (CUR), a yellow polyphenol compound is reportedly associated with a diverse therapeutic potential. Despite all curative properties of CUR, its usage in oral administration is restricted due to low bioavailability, low aqueous solubility and poor absorption rate. The aim of this study was to develop a nontoxic nanocurcumin (CUR-NPs) with en...

During last decades, hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) was introduced to fractionate and purify especially water-soluble solutes and macromolecule, such as peptides and proteins. Although, there are several evidences for its capability in one- and multi-dimensional fractionation, the reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) i...

Witches’broom diseases of Mexican lime (WBDL) caused by ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma aurantifolia, is a big threat to lime production in Southern Iran. In this investigation, concentration of catechin, epicatechin and their enantiomers were monitored during WBDL progression for 6 months. In addition, the activities of peroxidase (POD), phenylalanine amm...

Background and objectives: Due to the importance of finding of new antibacterial agents, the antibacterial properties of Prosopis cineraria aerial parts were investigated using a bioassay guided fractionation scheme. Materials and methods: The organic extract was prepared via maceration in methanol, followed by the fractionation using n-hexane a...

Diazinon insecticide is widely applied throughout rice (Oryza sativa L.) fields in Iran. However, concerns are now being raised about its potential adverse impacts on rice fields. In this study, a time-course metabolic change in rice plants was investigated after diazinon treatment using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and subsequentel...

Abstract Witches' broom disease of Mexican lime (WBDL), caused by 'Candidatus: Phytoplasma aurantifolia', is a big threat to lime production in southern Iran. In this research work, metabolite profiling of Mexican lime was monitored during WBDL progression (6 months) by gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS), to study the effect of Ca. P. aur...

Pistacia atlantica Desf. oleoresin is one of the most valuable economical exudates in Iran’s western natural forests. Adulteration of this oleoresin with other plant exudates of lower commercial value decreases the quality of end products. Two different methods can be used for adulteration detection: a top-down method, using thermal analysis techni...

Annulated sea snake, Hydrophis cyanocinctus, venom was investigated using reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to electrospray mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF/TOF). MALDI-TOF/TOF identified three compounds (a short-chain neurotoxin, a lo...

Diazinon insecticide is widely applied throughout rice (Oryza sativa L.) fields in Iran. However, concerns are now being raised about its potential adverse impacts on rice fields. In this study, a time-course metabolic change in rice plants was investigated after diazinon treatment using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and subsequently...

In this article, a fast, simple, accurate and selective HPLC method was validated for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the main flavonoids (rutin, hesperidin,catechin, epicatechin, naringenin, quercetin, and kaempferol) in Mexican lime and was appliedto monitor the variation of them during progression of witches- broom disease of lime (...

Chelidonium majus is a well-known medicinal plant of papaveraceae family which demonstrates numerous therapeutic effects due to the presence of isoquinolide alkaloids such as sanguinarine and berberine. In this study, after validation of an HPLC method, levels of these alkaloids in root samples of this plant collected from north of Iran were measur...

The increasing use of silver nanoparticles, (AgNPs), will inevitably result in their release into the environment and thereby cause the exposure to plants. It was claimed that using AgNPs is a safe and efficient method to preserve and treat agents of disease in agriculture. This study tries to understand the protein populations and sub-populations...