Cancer is a dreadful human disease, increasing with changing lifestyle, nutrition, and global warming. Its treatments do not have potent medicine as the currently available drugs results in severe side effects. Past activities in this area focused on the natural products derived from medicinal plants. According to the WHO, 80% of the world’s population primarily those from developing countries rely on plant-derived medicines for the health care. Over the past few decades, significant efforts have been made, jointly by pharmaceutical and academic institutions, to isolate and identify new marine-derived natural products. With the advancement of technology and methodology in this area, numerous new compounds have been isolated and several novel anticancer compounds are under clinical investigations. The ocean biomass, covering two-third of the earth, with huge unexplored natural product offers enormous scope and presents an effective alternative in natural product drug discovery. The uniqueness in oceanic mega-diversity is due to spatial as well as temporal competition along with unique habitat with extreme pressure, temperature, and saline conditions. As a result of this, marine organisms have adapted and evolved themselves successfully since centuries in these conditions by producing molecules which are unique in structures, biosynthesis, and function. This “chemical adaptations” is an excellent source of novel chemical entities which is absent in land-based organisms. The past decade has seen more than 10,000 compounds isolated from marine sources which have dramatically increased the number of preclinical anticancers drug under evaluation, and over 300 patents on bioactive natural products from marine sources were granted during this tenure. Efforts, in this direction, became more serious and focused with National Cancer Institute, USA taking a lead role. By collaborative interactions between pharmaceutical companies and research organization, numerous drug-like molecules with several of them having clinical and preclinical potential were discovered. Ecteinascidin-743/ET-743 from Caribbean tunicate and Didemnin and Aplidine from Aplidium albicans are some of the successful examples. Sterols and dietary fibers from seaweeds also hold immense potential. However, investigation of the marine floras chemical entities as drug-like molecule is still in its embryonic stage. The present chapter showcases the past research and reviews the baseline data for promoting further research in this field.
Cancer is a dreadful human disease, increasing with changing lifestyle, nutrition, and global warming. Its treatments do not have potent medicine as the currently available drugs results in severe side effects. Past activities in this area focused on the natural products derived from medicinal plants. According to the WHO, 80% of the world’s population primarily those from developing countries rely on plant-derived medicines for the health care. Over the past few decades, significant efforts have been made, jointly by pharmaceutical and academic institutions, to isolate and identify new marine-derived natural products. With the advancement of technology and methodology in this area, numerous new compounds have been isolated and several novel anticancer compounds are under clinical investigations. The ocean biomass, covering two-third of the earth, with huge unexplored natural product offers enormous scope and presents an effective alternative in natural product drug discovery. The uniqueness in oceanic mega-diversity is due to spatial as well as temporal competition along with unique habitat with extreme pressure, temperature, and saline conditions. As a result of this, marine organisms have adapted and evolved themselves successfully since centuries in these conditions by producing molecules which are unique in structures, biosynthesis, and function. This “chemical adaptations” is an excellent source of novel chemical entities which is absent in land-based organisms. The past decade has seen more than 10,000 compounds isolated from marine sources which have dramatically increased the number of preclinical anticancers drug under evaluation, and over 300 patents on bioactive natural products from marine sources were granted during this tenure. Efforts, in this direction, became more serious and focused with National Cancer Institute, USA taking a lead role. By collaborative interactions between pharmaceutical companies and research organization, numerous drug-like molecules with several of them having clinical and preclinical potential were discovered. Ecteinascidin-743/ET-743 from Caribbean tunicate and Didemnin and Aplidine from Aplidium albicans are some of the successful examples. Sterols and dietary fibers from seaweeds also hold immense potential. However, investigation of the marine floras chemical entities as drug-like molecule is still in its embryonic stage. The present chapter showcases the past research and reviews the baseline data for promoting further research in this field.
Principles of Soil Physics examines the impact of the physical, mechanical, and hydrological properties and processes of soil on agricultural production, the environment, and sustainable use of natural resources. The text incorporates valuable assessment methods, graphs, problem sets, and tables from recent studies performed around the globe and offers an abundance of tables, photographs, and easy-to-follow equations in every chapter. The book discusses the consequences of soil degradation, such as erosion, inhibited root development, and poor aeration. It begins by defining soil physics, soil mechanics, textural properties, and packing arrangements . The text continues to discuss the theoretical and practical aspects of soil structure and explain the significance and measurement of bulk density, porosity, and compaction. The authors proceed to clarify soil hydrology topics including hydrologic cycle, water movement, infiltration, modeling, soil evaporation, and solute transport processes. They address the impact of soil temperature on crop growth, soil aeration, and the processes that lead to the emission of greenhouse gases. The final chapters examine the physical properties of gravelly soils and water movement in frozen, saline, and water-repellant soils. Reader-friendly and up-to-date, Principles of Soil Physics provides unparalleled coverage of issues related to soil physics, structure, hydrology, aeration, temperature, and analysis and presents practical techniques for maintaining soil quality to ultimately preserve its sustainability.
Do you want to know how some of the skills we generally tend to ignore, play a significant role in our success? How observations led to important scientific inventions? How world leaders used communication skills to achieve their objectives? How MNCs use the power of purpose to connect with customers and employees? Why India is left behind in the economic race, and how fire helped humans become wiser? Through various examples and stories, all the above questions are answered in Power of Ignored Skills. This book not only highlights problems but also offer solutions to some of the most complex problems. This book is a handy resource for a student, a leader or anyone climbing the corporate ladders. More than fifty examples and stories make the book interesting.
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