Agra: A new study by Saba Tufail, a post-doctoral fellow at Aligarh Muslim University’s Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College (JNMC) has revealed that ovalbumin nanosheets, derived from egg whites, can help in the treatment of deadly diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The research also unravels that ovalbumin can assist in a more effective formulation of the anti-cancer drug doxorubicin when used during immuno-therapy and chemotherapy procedures. Tufail’s study has been published in the prestigious ‘Journal of Biological Chemistry’, a weekly peer-reviewed journal published in the US.Pursuing research under Najmul Islam of the department of biochemistry at JNMC, Tufail and her team investigated host immune responses to amyloid fibrils, which are thought to contribute to the degradation of brain nerve cells and subsequent symptoms of degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.“When we kept ovalbumin for amyloid synthesis, it was observed that giant protein nanosheets have amyloid-like features. This novel nanostructure is likely to help understand the architecture of amyloid and devise better treatment strategies for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” said Tufail.She added that they hypothesized how the extended two-dimensional structure of these nanosheets can facilitate loading of chemotherapeutic drugs, therefore having applications in combined immunotherapy and chemotherapy procedures. “The amyloid nanosheets are also of immense significance because they are cheap, easy to synthesize and their amyloid nature facilitates them to act as antigens, adjuvants and a delivery system simultaneously,” said Tufail.

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