Every week Nature India hand-picks a selection of papers that might be of interest or relevance to the scientific community in the region.  In this regard, researchers at the Amrita School of Biotechnology (ASBT), Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, were thrilled to find that their work which was recently published in the USA based journal Bioorganic Chemistry (Kalyanvenkatraman S. et al, 66, 72-79, 2016) was the research pick of the week in Nature India.

The research which identified that the triterpenoid natural product Arjunolic acid, isolated from the plant Terminalia arjuna, inhibits the activity of Carbonic Anhydrase 2, an enzyme linked to cardiac hypertrophy, was carried out by a Ph.D student, Ms. Subhalakshmi Kalyanvenkatraman, under the guidance of Dr. Geetha Kumar, Professor, Amrita School of Biotechnology.

According to this study, Arjunolic acid exhibited maximum efficiency in blocking the activity of Carbonic Anhydrase 2, which converts carbon dioxide into bicarbonate and plays a significant role in cellular processes that lead to diseases such as cardiac hypertrophy.  Dr. Geetha,  who leads the group involved in this study, indicated that this ability of Arjunolic acid to protect cells by increasing the level of antioxidants makes Arjunolic acid a promising compound for designing effective drugs to treat cardiac hypertrophy and related disease states.

The selection of this paper as Nature India’s pick of the week is certainly a big feather in the research cap, for the Amrita School of Biotechnology, acknowledged Dr. Bipin Nair, Dean of the School.  It is also wonderful recognition for the tireless efforts of Dr. Asoke Banerji and the Phytochemistry group at ASBT, Dr. Nair added.