Sandeep Kumar

© 2014 American Chemical Society.. Targeted delivery of therapeutic and imaging agents in the vascular compartment represents a significant hurdle in using nanomedicine for treating hemorrhage, thrombosis, and atherosclerosis. While several types of nanoparticles have been developed to meet this goal, their utility is limited by poor circulation, limited margination, and minimal targeting. Platelets have an innate ability to marginate to the vascular wall and specifically interact with vascular injury sites. These platelet functions are mediated by their shape, flexibility, and complex surface interactions. Inspired by this, we report the design and evaluation of nanoparticles that exhibit platelet-like functions including vascular injury site-directed margination, site-specific adhesion, and amplification of injury sitespecific aggregation. Our nanoparticles mimic four key attributes of platelets, discoidal morphology, mechanical flexibility, biophysically and biochemically mediated aggregation, and heteromultivalent presentation of ligands that mediate adhesion to both von Willebrand Factor and collagen, as well as specific clustering to activated platelets. Platelet-like nanoparticles exhibit enhanced surface-binding compared to spherical and rigid discoidal counterparts and site-selective adhesive and platelet-aggregatory properties under physiological flow conditions in vitro. In vivo studies in a mouse model demonstrated that PLNs accumulate at the wound site and induce ∼65% reduction in bleeding time, effectively mimicking and improving the hemostatic functions of natural platelets. We show that both the biochemical and biophysical design parameters of PLNs are essential in mimicking platelets and their hemostatic functions. PLNs offer a nanoscale technology that integrates platelet-mimetic biophysical and biochemical properties for potential applications in injectable synthetic hemostats and vascularly targeted payload delivery.

Food security is a burning problem before scientists, which mainly concern with the scarcity and accessible food for all. Scientists are ever-involved to find-out the solutions to overcome on these hurdles, majorly by boosting soil Fertility. Over the last 20 to 30 years, the role of soil microbiome in the improvement of soil fertility and crop productivity by involving role of the microbial life has been emerged sustain and facilitated soil nutrients availability to the plants. The microbial life as the great engines enriching soil and helping to facilitate the breakdown of organic matter, that can be recycled into new life, if only they could be unlocked from that organic matter and also, from the mineral matter. The microbes, especially endospore forming Bacilli are incredibly important in the rhizosphere. Bacillus is a versatile candidate providing its services in plant growth and health promotion tirelessly. This aerobic microorganism is powered with super abilities to produce endospore resting fruiting bodies, whenever it feels unhappy under adversity. Bacillus is also known for its several characteristics, to help crop plants by virtue of producing metabolites similar to plant in the form of phytohormones. Besides, it is able to mineralize rocks and minerals into bio-available form and can metabolize organic matter into much simpler forms. Plant pumps huge amount of sugar and other organic matter in the soil through roots, which attract bacteria to fasten their growth on spent of these supplements. In addition, Bacillus is known to produce sort of secretions of which assist in root colonization due to rhizo-competence on root surface and sometimes invade in root cells. In this chapter, we have reviewed the benefits of Bacillus species to the food security crops in term of raising productivity and yield.