Abstract: Chemical engineering is a vast arena wherein membrane science and technology has made rapid strides owing to inherent features such as process and environmental safety, low capital investment with minimum energy consumption. This article highlights the continuous efforts made by the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, in the design of newer membranes and membrane processes based on nanofiltration, electrodialysis, and reverse osmosis for the recovery of solvents, purification of specialty chemicals, provision of safe drinking water, and treatment of effluents in pharmaceutical, steel, aromatics, and textile industries. Various applications are demonstrated by highlighting case studies in each area. Extensive inroads were made to develop newer technologies to address challenging problems in various arenas for domestic needs and industrial growth besides management of pandemics and disasters. The institute focused to develop user-friendly technologies in the current pandemic situation to mitigate COVID-19, which includes multilayered masks, face shields, ultrapure water for hand sanitizers, and a touch-free dispenser. Around 7 lakh face masks and 2000 face shields were distributed in 20 States of India including 1 lakh free face masks for frontline Covid warriors. A cascaded RO membrane-resin hybrid system was designed for the production of ultrapure water for medical-grade, biotechnology, laboratory, hand sanitizer, and automobile applications. More than 50,000 kidney patients have been treated at Nephroplus hospitals using dialysis grade water produced by IICT designed pilot plants. Various other medical devices were also developed for the prevention of diseases such as membrane aided cells for the production of alkaline water as an immunity booster, a UV chamber for disinfecting edible and non-edible items, and a ventilator for emergency medical care.

CSIR-IICT also ventured into defluoridation of groundwater in rural areas of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. Installation of 15 model defluoridation pilot plants of 1000-4000 L/h capacity provides safe drinking water to a population of 1 Million which has been widely appreciated by the press, masses, and Governor of the State. The development of inexpensive hollow fiber membranes for clarification and disinfection of surface water by ultrafiltration has shown potential in bringing down the cost of purified water. Several hand pump-operated systems have been deployed in seven flood-affected states including Kerala, Karnataka, West Bengal, and Bihar.

IICT has recently developed highly compact low cost vertical modular RO/NF/UF systems of 100-200 L/h capacity for schools, colleges, hospitals, and small village hamlet clusters that are successfully installed in several locations. These units are also installed in free water camps to provide safe and clean drinking water to a large urban population during the summer seasons.

IICT also developed a bottling unit and commercialized packaged drinking water in collaboration with HPCL to provide high mineral content in bottled water for the common people. The regions suffering from water scarcity or availability of only saline and brackish water problems were also taken into consideration to develop an indigenous Atmospheric Water Generator (AWG), which harvests a very small fraction of abundant moisture present in the atmosphere through dehumidification and condensation technologies to produce mineral-enriched clean drinking water for arid zones, hilly regions, border areas, and coastal belts for the army, navy, coastguard and common population.

Future projects involve the development of solar-powered sea and brackish water desalination by forward osmosis and membrane distillation, besides a bioartificial extra-corporeal liver support device (BLSD) to alleviate liver failure conditions.

Quality by Design (QbD) is all about doing things determinedly with better understanding of the process and product. In Pharmaceutical development, this is a risk assessment through systematic approach with well-defined product quality. QbD gives scope for continued improvement of the product / process throughout the product life cycle (PLC) of and minimize the risk of variation filling so in worst-case scenario, product recall from the market. PLCM is a cross functional approach wherein the approaches of QbD are integrated to a working model of PLC. Achieving the QbD objectives via enablers & Pharmaceutical Quality System PQS) Elements is the key to successful management of PLC

Abstract: Cytosolic serine/ threonine family kinases exemplified by p38 and PIM kinases play a crucial role in the cancer progression and inflammation. Overexpression of PIM kinases is observed in various types of cancers including prostate, hematological, pancreatic, breast carcinoma and likewise. While elevated levels of p38 kinase has been attributed to numerous inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, cardiac ischemia and AD. Computational tools including quantitative structure activity relations, molecular docking and dynamic simulation studies can be applied to develop new kinase inhibitors thus facilitate the discovery of new kinase inhibitors.

Abstract: Pharmacokinetics (PK), in medicinal chemistry, refers to the time course of a drug’s absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion. In addition to efficacy, it is essential that any molecule intended for therapeutic use must possess desirable PK attributes along with negligible toxicity. However, a dearth of high-quality datasets, along with the inability of conventional methods to capture the complexities of PK phenomena ensure that in silico prediction of PK remains a challenge. To solve this issue, an intelligent Quantitative Structure Property Relationship (QSPR) methodology entitled “Eigenvalue Analysis (EVANS)” has been developed. The EVANS methodology follows an intricate molecular modelling protocol wherein distances computed from stable 3D molecular structures are amalgamated with 2D physicochemical properties. The corresponding “eigenvalues” that are generated may then be used as independent variables in QSPR analyses. We present the formalism in detail and apply the methodology on a benchmark dataset enumerating three critical PK parameters: steady-state volume of distribution (VD_ss), clearance (CL), and half-life (t_1/2). Predictive quantitative structure-pharmacokinetic relationship (QSPKR) models were built by using the eigenvalues generated via the EVANS methodology in conjunction with multiple linear regression (MLR), random forest (RF), and support vector machine (SVM) algorithms. It was observed that the EVANS QSPKR models sync with existing models in the literature. Thus, we present EVANS as a unique hybrid of 2D and 3D QSPR, and a useful first-line predictor to prioritise compounds in drug discovery and development.