Research Interest

The numerous advantages of bioactive phytochemicals like Diallyl thiosulfinate (DATS) or allicin on human health have attracted scientific inventions and innovations in the latest years for the application in formulating dietary supplements, food products and medicines. In order to maximize the extraction of the phytodrug DATS from Allium sativum, an indigenous approach was devised that relies on the hybrid application of ultrasonication and self-aggregation property of nonionic polymers. Under the optimal conditions of several process parameters (including solvent to garlic biomass ratio, ultrasonic amplitude, ultrasonic duty cycle, ultrasonication time), optimal efficiency of DATS extraction was achieved (3.67 mg/g of garlic biomass). From the two-way ANOVA analysis, ultrasound amplitude was found most significant parameter. Additionally, this proposed approach was able to enhance ∼2.67 fold yield of DATS with significantly lower electric power consumption than the conventional technique. Moreover, polyethylene glycol based pH responsive self-assembly carrier system was prepared which helped to maintain a 94% concentration of DATS for around 30 days and reduced the concentration loss of DATS because of molecular degradation. This hybrid extraction-stabilization method can be beneficial for the industrial application of DATS extraction because its bioactivity was well preserved as observed from the in vitro antibacterial experiment. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359511323001344 

The present investigation illustrates the in silico structure based drug design method to identify the target bacterial proteins of diallyl thiosulfinate (allicin) and its inhibitory mode of action against the target proteins through molecular docking simulation. As phytochemicals are continuously gaining attention for antimicrobial therapy against various infectious diseases, a stable, efficient and cost-effective herbal formulation that includes allicin should gain esteemed confidence in accordance to patient compliance in this modern world. Zero violation was observed for Lipinski’s rule of drug likeliness for allicin which proves that allicin can be used in herbal medicine formulations. Several bacterial growth promoting enzymes were found susceptible to allicin during in silico analysis. Moreover, allicin has been shown to inhibit several proteins responsible for bacterial drug resistance by binding with their active site residues revealing the mode of action. The best binding was observed with Dihydrofolate reductase enzyme among 32 bacterial strains with average binding energy of −3.75 Kcal/mol. Also, allicin showed interaction with resistant modulating proteins of several multi drug resistant strains. This reflects the theoretical evidence of allicin’s antimicrobial property and effectiveness on drug resistant strains studied previously by other researchers. The docking study is also supported by the in vitro analysis. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359511322003531

Synergistic therapy against the resurgence of bacterial pathogenesis is a modern trend for antibacterial chemotherapy. The phytochemical allicin, found in garlic extract is a commendable antimicrobial agent that can be used in synergistic combination with modern antibiotics. Determination of optimal antibacterial combination for the target species is vital for maximizing efficacy, lowering toxicity, total eradication of the bacterial cells and minimization of the risk of resistance generation. In this present investigation, Hill function-based pharmacodynamics models were employed to elaborate various time-kill kinetics parameters. The bactericidal potency of the synergistic combinations of allicin and individual antibiotic was assessed in comparison to their monotherapy application viz. using sole allicin and sole antibiotics (levofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, oxytetracycline, rifaximin, ornidazole and azithromycin) on actively growing Bacillus subtilis and Escherichia coli bacteria. Here, all the synergistic combinations showed significantly better (t-test p-value < 0.05) killing effect and biofilm reduction potential compared to their respective monotherapy application, where the highest killing effect was observed with rifaximin-allicin combination (kill rate was more than 5.5 h−1). Moreover, the average inhibition potential to protein denaturation by the synergistic combination group was significantly higher (3.4 fold) than the sole antibiotic's group manifests reduction in the dose-related toxicity. The potential of synergism between antibiotics and allicin combination demonstrated greater killing efficiency at significantly lower concentration compared to monotherapy with increased kill rates in all cases.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389172322000597

Allicin is a bioactive phytochemical and a defense imitative compound of Allium sativum. Allicin's multidirectional health benefits (anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, anticancer etc.) have drawn several research interests in the recent years. The present investigation demonstrates an indigenous sustainable hybrid extraction strategy, where a nonionic polysorbate surfactant based micellar solvent system was formulated and applied along with ultrasonication for intensifying the extraction of phytodrug allicin from garlic. The results revealed that at the optimized conditions of various process parameters viz., temperature 30 °C, pH 7, ionic concentration of 1 mM Mg2+, solvent:clove ratio at 10:1 (ml/g), ultrasonic amplitude of 40%, duty cycle 80%, time 60 min, 0.07 mM tween 80 surfactant concentration, maximum extraction efficiency of the allicin (4.33 mg/g of clove) from fresh garlic were obtained. Further, this hybrid method was able to increase the final yield of allicin by ∼2.5 fold compared to the conventional type extraction. The micelle system reduced the loss of allicin due to degradation by ∼15%. Finally, the antibacterial assay reveals that this hybrid extraction process can uphold the bioactivity of the phytodrug allicin. Thus, this proposed method can be considered as suitable, effective and sustainable strategy to extract allicin. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0255270121003056