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Investigating the chemistry of antioxidants and polysaccharides present in date-fruit (Phoenix dactylifera) as a novel/potential therapies for neoplastic and infectious diseases.


   Faculty of Health, Science, Social Care and Education

   Applications accepted all year round  Self-Funded PhD Students Only

About the Project

Date-fruit contains vast amount of phenols; approx. 80400µmol/100g, which portray antioxidant abilities. Date-fruit extracts have been tested in many recent studies with results showing evidences of the antioxidant, anti-fungal, anti-parasitic, anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-mutagenic properties as natural alternatives in treating diseases. In-vivo and in-vitro studies demonstrated potential abilities in preventing damages to organs and/or slowing down unwanted side effects caused by oxidative stress and/or by chemo therapy. These properties could be extremely useful for different routes of administration through possible combination of nanoparticles cisplatin synthesised with date-fruit extract depending on the constituents and dosages required for a therapeutic effect. Nevertheless, in this context neither the date’s components have been fully examined nor their roles were clearly understood. This study would be a combined chemistry, parasitology, and/or life science project to investigate the mechanism of the date’s components in potentially preventing and/or treating cancer and/or minimising the side effects of the chemo treatment.


Funding Notes

No funding is available for this project

References

1. Rahmani, A.H., et al. ‘Therapeutic effects of date fruits (phoenix dactylifera) in the prevention of diseases via modulation of anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and anti-tumour activity’, 7(3), (2014).
2. Cancer Research UK. Worldwide cancer statistics; http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/worldwide-cancer.
3. Quaresma M, Coleman MP, Rachet B. 40-year trends in an index of survival for all cancers combined and survival adjusted for age and sex for each cancer in England and wales, 1971–2011: A population-based study. 2016.
4. Ishurd, O. and Kennedy, J.F. (2005) ‘The anti-cancer activity of polysaccharide prepared from Libyan dates (L.)’, Carbohydrate Polymers, 59(4), pp. 531–535. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2004.11.004, 2005Rencun Y, Hai H, Yu RC. Cancer management with Chinese medicine. Singapore, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co Pte. 2012
5. Lobo, V.,et al. ‘Free radicals, antioxidants and functional foods: Impact on human health’, 4(8), 2010.
6. Ramawat KG. Herbal drugs: Ethno-medicine to modern medicine. Berlin: Springer. 2009.
7. Najlaa S. Al-Radaddi. Green synthesis platinum nanoparticles using Saudi’s Date extract and their usage on the cancer cell treatment. Arabian Journal of Chemistry 12, 330-349, 2019.


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