Research Projects

This project aims to isolate and characterize Polymethoxyflavones (PMFs) from citrus peels using advanced green extraction methods, synthesize PMFs-nanoformulations, and explore their impact on gut microbiome dysbiosis, immunomodulatory effect, and role in decreasing colorectal cancer (CRC) risk. PMFs-nanoformulations will be studied for enhancing solubility, absorption, and oral bioavailability in CRC. The in vitro and in vivo effects of citrus peel PMFs and PMFs-nanoformulations will be studied, including blocking metastasis cascades, inhibiting cancer cell mobility, detoxifying reactive molecules, activating the host immune system, angiogenesis, reversing multidrug resistance, inducing cell cycle arrest and apoptosis, and targeting oncogenic signaling pathways in CRC. Gait microbial biomarkers will be identified through 16S rRNA gene sequencing and species-level functional analysis will be performed by metagenome sequencing for gut microbial diversity in PMFs treated mice. The pathways used by gut microbes for infections will be studied using various biochemical and molecular methods. The combination of PMFs' effect on gut microbial metabolism and microbiome analyses will help elucidate interactions between gut microbiota and the host in preventing CRC. The results will identify new opportunities for human clinical trials to assess preventive and therapeutic effects. The project aims to provide insights on producing a citrus peel PMFs nutraceutical data bank, which could help formulate novel herbal drug therapies using pure PMF compounds and synthesized nanomaterials. The results will contribute to the development of novel nutraceuticals for food and herbal drugs in India, and provide publicly available PMFs food composition databases.