Luciana Scotti

Universidade Federal da Paraíba | UFPB · Laboratório de Tecnologia Farmacêutica

Background: Tubulin polymerization inhibitors interfere with microtubule assembly and their functions lead to mitotic arrest, therefore they are attractive target for design and development of novel anticancer compounds. Objective: The proposed novel and effective structures following the use of three-dimensional-quantitative structure activity rel...

The characterization and cytotoxicity of the essential oil from Conyza bonariensis (L.) aerial parts (CBEO) were previously conducted. The major compound was (Z)-2-lachnophyllum ester (EZ), and CBEO exhibited significant ROS-dependent cytotoxicity in the melanoma cell line SK-MEL-28. Herein, we employed the Molegro Virtual Docker v.6.0.1 software t...

The critical enzyme Dihydrofolate Reductase-Thymidylate Synthase in Leishmania major (LmDHFR-TS) serves a dual-purpose role and is essential for DNA synthesis, a cornerstone of the parasite's reproductive processes. Consequently, the development of inhibitors against LmDHFR-TS is crucial for the creation of novel anti-Leishmania chemotherapies. In...

In the field of medicinal chemistry, the concept of pharmacophore refers to the specific region of a molecule that possesses essential structural and chemical characteristics for binding to a receptor and eliciting biological activity. Understanding the pharmacophore is crucial for drug research and development, as it allows the design of new drugs...

Major depressive disorder is a severe mood disorder characterized by different emotions and feelings. This study investigated the antidepressant activity of the phenylpropanoid methyleugenol (ME) in adult female mice exposed to a stress model induced by dexamethasone. The animals were randomly divided into groups containing eight animals and were p...

Introduction: Brain tumors have high morbidity and mortality rates, accounting for 1.4% of all cancers. Gliomas are the most common primary brain tumors in adults. Currently, several thera-peutic approaches are used; however, they are associated with side effects that affect pa-tients'quality of life. Therefore, further studies are needed to devel...

This work focuses on investigating solvents for the catalyst-free synthesis of 2-amino-4H-chromenes from salicylaldehydes and malononitrile through the Knoevenagel-Michael sequential reaction. The use of ethanol under reflux conditions resulted in the production of several 2-amino-4H-chromenes 5(a-g) with high isolated yields (75-93%) within a shor...

Background: Skin aging is a natural process resulting from intrinsic (hormonal and genetic) and extrinsic (environmental) factors. Photoaging occurs due to prolonged exposure of the skin to ultraviolet radiation, accounting for 80% of facial aging. Introduction: Characteristics of aging skin include reduced elasticity, the appearance of fine wri...

Chagas' disease affects approximately eight million people throughout the world, especially the poorest individuals. The protozoan that causes this disease-Trypanosoma cruzi-has the enzyme cruzipain, which is the main therapeutic target. As no available medications have satisfactory effectiveness and safety, it is of fundamental importance to desig...

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cancer is the second cause of death worldwide, responsible for almost 10 million deaths and accounting for one in every six deaths. It is a disease that can affect any organ or tissue with rapid progression to the final stage, which is metastasis, in which the disease spreads to different regions of...

The importance of R&D of new antivirals has been highly evident with the emergence of the pandemic caused by SARS‐CoV‐2. Pyrimidines are heterocyclic compounds with a broad biological spectrum. In this review we emphasize the antiviral application of pyrimidines. Scientific articles, drug and patent registrations were searched using terms involving...

Cancer is a multifactorial disease that continues to increase. Lignans are known to be important anticancer agents. However, due to the structural diversity of lignans, it is difficult to associate anticancer activity with a particular subclass. Therefore, the present study sought to evaluate the association of lignan subclasses with antitumor acti...

Citrus sinensis (L.) Osbeck (Rutaceae), commonly known as the sweet orange, is a popular and widely consumed fruit with several medicinal properties. The present study aimed to perform the in silico screening of 18 flavonoids and eight volatile components from the peel of C. sinensis against apoptotic and inflammatory proteins, metalloprotease, and...

Chalcones are direct precursors in the biosynthesis of flavonoids. They have an α,β-unsaturated carbonyl system which gives them broad biological properties. Among the biological properties exerted by chalcones, their ability to suppress tumors stands out, in addition to their low toxicity. In this perspective, the present work explores the role of...

The use of agrochemicals has become a standard practice worldwide to ensure the productivity and quality of sugarcane crops. This study aimed to analyze the metabolic changes in sugarcane culms treated with five different nematicides. The experimental design was randomized in blocks, and agro-industrial and biometric variables were evaluated. The s...

Introduction: Despite numerous scientific advances, cancer continues to be one of the main causes of death in the world. This situation has driven the search for promising molecules. Lichen substances have been widely described for their pharmacological potential. The present study evaluated the antitumour potential of a depsidone isolated from Pa...

The bifunctional enzyme Dihydrofolate reductase-thymidylate synthase (DHFR-TS) plays a crucial role in the survival of the Leishmania parasite, as folates are essential cofactors for purine and pyrimidine nucleotide biosynthesis. However, DHFR inhibitors are largely ineffective in controlling trypanosomatid infections, largely due to the presence o...

Natural products have important pharmacological activities. This study sought to investigate the activity of the compound betulinic acid (BA) against different strains of bacteria and fungi. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) was determined and then the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) and minimum fungicidal concentration (MFC). Aft...

Chagas disease, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, occurs most commonly in Latin America. As the treatment is highly toxic and ineffective in the chronic phase of the disease, alternative treatments are needed. Through quantitative structure-activity relationship modeling (QSAR) analysis using ligand-based and structure-based virtual screeni...

Candida albicans is associated with serious infections in immunocompromised patients. Terpenes are natural-product derivatives, widely studied as antifungal alternatives. In a previous study reported by our group, the antifungal activity of α-pinene against C. albicans was verified; α-pinene presented an MIC between 128–512 µg/mL. In this study, we...

The citral is a monoterpene composed of two isomers: neral and geranial. These molecules have several pharmacological activities, such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antifungal. Therefore, this work analyzed the physicochemical differences of the citral isomers and a case study of their antifungal activity.

Introduction: Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are neurodegenerative disorders that affect a great number of people around the world, seriously compromising the quality of life of individuals, due to motor and cognitive damage. In these diseases, pharmacological treatment is used only to alleviate symptoms. This emphasizes the need to discover alternat...

SARS‐CoV‐2 main protease (Mpro) plays an essential role in proteolysis cleavage that promotes coronavirus replication. Thus, attenuating the activity of this enzyme represents a strategy to develop antiviral agents. We report inhibitory effects against Mpro of 40 synthetic chalcones, and cytotoxicity activities, hemolysis, and in silico interaction...

The leishmaniasis is a neglected disease caused by a group of protozoan parasites from the genus Leishmania whose treatment is limited, obsolete, toxic, and ineffective in certain cases. These characteristics motivate researchers worldwide to plan new therapeutic alternatives for the treatment of leishmaniasis, where the use of cheminformatics tool...

Sesquiterpene lactone (SL) subtypes including hirsutinolide and cadinanolide have a controversial genesis. Metabolites of these classes are either described as natural products or as artifacts produced via the influence of solvents, chromatographic mobile phases, and adsorbents used in phytochemical studies. Based on this divergence, and to better...

Background Neurological disorders are composed of several diseases that affect the central and peripheral nervous system; among these are neurodegenerative diseases, which lead to neuronal death. Many of these diseases have treatment for the disease and symptoms, leading patients to use several drugs that cause side effects. Introduction The searc...

The World Health Organization classifies Leishmania as one of the 17 “neglected diseases” that burden tropical and sub-tropical climate regions with over half a million diagnosed cases each year. Despite this, currently available anti-leishmania drugs have high toxicity and the potential to be made obsolete by parasite drug resistance. We chose to...

Objectives Considering that γ-terpinene (γ-TPN) is a monoterpene found in Cannabis oil, with high lipophilicity and limited pharmacokinetics, our objective was to evaluate whether its complexation in β-cyclodextrin (γ-TPN/β-CD) could improve its physicochemical properties and action on cancer pain, as well as verify the mechanisms of action involve...

Eriocaulaceae is a pantropical family whose main center of biodiversity is in Brazil. In general, the family has about 1200 species, in which phytochemical and biological studies have shown a variety of structures and activities. The aim of this research is to compile the compounds isolated in the Eriocaulaceae family and carry out a computational...

Introduction: HIV, whose viral multiplication is associated with three enzymes. Reverse transcriptase is responsible for synthesizing vital DNA based on its RNA; integrase is responsible for integrating viral DNA into human DNA; and protease is responsible for cleaving the genetic code into smaller, functional units. Many research groups around the...

Background Epilepsy is a neurological disease affected by an imbalance of inhibitory and excitatory signaling in the brain. Introduction In this disease, the targets are active in pathophysiology and thus can be used as a focus for pharmacological treatment. Methods Several studies demonstrated the antiepileptic effect of drugs acting on the foll...

Leishmaniasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by protozoa of the genus Leishmania. Current drug treatments for leishmaniasis are outdated and questionable due to variability in their effectiveness between different Leishmania species. In this perspective, we combined two predictive ligand-based virtual screening models to select potentially...

i>Trypanosoma Leishmania Candida albicans Salmonella enterica Escherichia coli Here we report the development of MolPredictX, an innovate and freely accessible web interface for biological activity predictions of query molecules. MolPredictX utilizes in‐house QSAR models to provide 27 qualitative predictions (active or inactive), and quantitative p...

CALL PAPERS: JUST REVIEW, NO CHARGE, H-INDEX OF THE CORRESPONDENCE AUTHOR (MINIMUM)=15.....TENTATIVE TITLE SOON TO luciana.scotti@gmail.com

Plants of Hyptidinae subtribe (Lamiaceae - family), as Mesosphaerum sidifolium, are a source of bioactive molecules. In the search for new drug candidates, we perform chemical characterization of diterpenes isolated from the aerial parts of M. sidifolium was carried out with uni- and bidimensional NMR spectral data, and evaluate in silico through t...

Chagas disease, a neglected tropical disease, is endemic in 21 Latin American countries and particularly prevalent in Brazil. Chagas disease has drawn more attention in recent years due to its expansion into non-endemic areas. The aim of this work was to computationally identify and experimentally validate the natural products from an Annonaceae fa...

INTRODUCTION The drugs currently available for treatment of anxiety and depression act through modulation of the neu-rotransmission systems involved in the neurobiology of the disorder, yet they often present side effects, which can impair patient adherence to treatment. METHOD This, has driven the search for new molecules with anxiolytic and anti...

Proteins are essential and versatile polymers consisting of sequenced amino acids that often possess an organized three-dimensional arrangement, (a result of their monomeric composition), which determines their biological role in cellular function. Proteins are involved in enzymatic catalysis; they participate in genetic information decoding and tr...

Although chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy is one of the main medical complaints of cancer patients, there are currently no specific drugs for the effective treatment. In this respect, α-terpineol (TP) seems to be a potential candidate for this purpose, since it has several pharmacological properties that can be improved by nanosytems. The...

Essential oils (EOs) are a mixture of chemical compounds with a long history of use in food, cosmetics, perfumes, agricultural and pharmaceuticals industries. The main object of this study was to find chemical patterns between 45 EOs and antiprotozoal activity (antiplasmodial, antileishmanial and antitrypanosomal), using different machine learning...

Aims: This study evaluated the antifungal, antibiofilm and molecular docking of 2-chloro-N-phenylacetamide against clinical isolates of Candida tropicalis and Candida parapsilosis. Methods and results: Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the test drugs was determined by microdilution. A1Cl obtained MIC values ranging from 16 and 256 μg/ml....

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) is a virus whose genetic material is positive single-stranded RNA, being responsible for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), an infection that compromises the lungs and consequently the respiratory capacity of the infected individual, according to the WHO in November 2021, 249,743,428 ca...

Schistosomiasis is a chronic parasitic disease caused by trematodes of the genus Schistosoma; it is commonly caused by Schistosoma mansoni, which is transmitted by Bioamphalaria snails. Studies show that more than 200 million people are infected and that more than 90% of them live in Africa. Treatment with praziquantel has the best cost–benefit res...

Background Chronic orofacial pain is a serious public health problem with a prevalence of 7-11% in the population. This disorder has different etiologies and characteristics that make pharmacological treatment difficult. Natural products have been shown to be a promising source of treatments for the management of chronic pain, as an example the ter...

Target-based drug discovery tools have been used with success in the pharmaceutical industry. They have become the fundamental methodologies for discovering new drugs in recent years, with two main advantages over the traditional methodologies: increased speed and greater economic efficiency. Improved computational capacities and new software packa...

Leishmaniasis refers to a complex of diseases, caused by the intracellular parasitic protozoans belonging to the genus Leishmania. Among the three types of disease manifestations, the most severe type is visceral leishmaniasis, which is caused by Leishmania donovani, and is diagnosed in more than 20,000 cases annually, worldwide. Because the curren...

The presence of chemicals in the aquatic environment is a global concern. Determining the effects of compounds in aquatic ecosystems is of paramount importance for the assessment of hazards and the development of environmental regulations. There are now several tools available on the Internet that can measure the toxicity of different compounds. Th...

Natural products are compounds isolated from plants that provide a variety of lead structures for the development of new drugs by the pharmaceutical industry. The interest in these substances increases because of their beneficial effects on human health. Alzheimer's disease (AD ) affects occur in about 80% of individuals aged 65 years. AD is the mo...

Aspergillus genus causes many diseases, and the species Aspergillus flavus is highly virulent. Treatment of aspergillosis involves azole derivatives such as voriconazole and polyenes such as amphotericin B. Due to an increase in fungal resistance, treatments are now less effective; the search for new compounds with promising antifungal activity has...

Background Neglected diseases require special attention when looking for new therapeutic alternatives, as these are diseases of extreme complexity and severity that affect populations belonging to lower social classes who are lacking access to basic rights such as basic sanitation. Introduction Among the alternatives available for obtaining new dr...

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are unusual cancers which begin in specialized cells in the gastrointestinal tract wall. Various strategies involving single-agents, combinations, and rapid complementary inhibitor cycling are now being used to control such tumors. Based on promising early clinical trial experience, certain novel KIT, and PDG...

Background Selective and reversible types of MAO-B inhibitors have emerged as promising candidates for the management of neurodegenerative diseases. Several functionalized chalcone derivatives were shown to have potential reversible MAO-B inhibitory activity, which have recently been reported from our laboratory. Methods With the experimental resu...

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, representing 60–70% of dementia cases. The enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE) cleaves the ester bonds in acetylcholine and plays an important role in the termination of acetylcholine activity at cholinergic synapses in various regions of the nervous system. The inhibition of acetylcholinester...

Background COVID-19 is still causing victims with long-term health consequences, mass deaths, and collapsing healthcare systems around the world. The disease has no efficient drugs. However, previous studies revealed that SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV have 96% and 86.5% similarities in cysteine proteases (3CL pro ) and papain-like protease (PL pro ) sequ...

Rheumatoid arthritis, arthrosis and gout, among other chronic inflammatory diseases are public health problems and represent major therapeutic challenges. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are the most prescribed clinical treatments, despite their severe side effects and their exclusive action in improving symptoms, without effectively...

The Annonaceae family of plants is one of the most anatomically and structurally uniform families. Chemotaxonomy is a common practice to determine the chemical patterns within these families at different phylogenetic levels. The aim of this study was to build a dataset of all the secondary metabolites isolated within the Annonaceae family and to pe...

Background Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a very common neurodegenerative disorder in individuals over 65 years of age, however, younger individuals can also be affected due to early brain damage. Introduction The general symptoms of this disease include progressive loss of memory, changes in behavior, deterioration of thinking, and gradual loss of a...

Organic chemicals identified in raw landfill leachate (LL) and their transformation products (TPs), formed during Fenton treatment, were analyzed for chemical safety following REACH guidelines. The raw LL was located in the metropolitan region of Campina Grande, in northeast Brazil. We elucidated 197 unique chemical structures, including 154 compou...

The current treatments against Leishmania parasites present high toxicity and multiple side effects, which makes the control and elimination of leishmaniasis challenging. Natural products constitute an interesting and diverse chemical space for the identification of new antileishmanial drugs. To identify new drug options, an in-house database of 36...

Natural products and their secondary metabolites are promising starting points for the development of drug prototypes and new drugs, as many current treatments for numerous diseases are directly or indirectly related to such compounds. State-of-the-art, curated, integrated, and frequently updated databases of secondary metabolites are thus highly r...