Profile
Dr. Shivraj Nile’s lab at NABI focuses on analyzing food, herbal, and natural bioactive compounds, assessing their biological activity, chemical toxicity, and therapeutic effects. The extracted bioactive compounds are utilized to develop functional foods, herbal drugs, nanomaterials, and biomaterials through various biochemical methods. The lab also emphasizes the valorization of plant, fruit, and food waste to extract value-added products, including nutrients, bio-sugars, phenolics, and other bioactive phytochemicals. They explore natural colorants from plants and biowaste as alternatives to synthetic colorants. Research includes evaluating wild and exotic edible fruits, flowers, and vegetables for use in food, cosmetics, and natural drugs. Their studies encompass metabolite analysis from medicinal plants and biowastes, targeting diseases like cancer, gout, diabetes, and kidney stones, with a focus on enzyme inhibition, antioxidant, cytotoxic, and anti-inflammatory activities. The lab conducts both laboratory and large-scale experiments on fruit and vegetable biowastes, green extraction methods, bioactive compound analysis, and effective delivery systems with therapeutic benefits. They employ novel green extraction techniques such as SWE, SCE, PHWE, and UAE to enhance the solubility, bioavailability, and therapeutic effects of bioactive compounds while reducing toxicity through innovative nanotechnologies and delivery systems.
Current Focus Areas
Developed highly effective sub-critical and super critical water extraction method for plant and food bioactive compound extraction and analysis for future drug and functional food development.
Formulated a polyherbal drug therapy for kidney stone treatment - commercial antiurolithiatic product.
Extraction and utilisation of saffron and butea plant flowers biowaste extracted natural colorants for functional food development.
Development of plant and food bioactive compound based phytomedicines & nanomedicines as future drug therapy for cancer, diabetics and kidney stone.
Establishment of hairy root culture method for enhanced production of secondary metabolites.
Selected Publications
1. Shelar, A. Nile, S.H. Singh, A.V. Rothenstein, D. Bill, J. Xiao, J. Chaskar, M. Kai, G. Patil, R. 2023. Recent Advances in Nano-Enabled Seed Treatment Strategies for Sustainable Agriculture: Challenges, Risk Assessment and Future Perspectives. Nano-Micro Letters, 15:54, 1-37.
2. Gansukh, E. Nile, A. Kim, D.H. Oh, J.W. Nile. S.H. 2020. New insights into antiviral and cytotoxic potential of quercetin and its derivatives – A biochemical perspective. Food Chemistry, 334, 127508.
3. Nile, A. Gansukh, E. Park, G.S. Kim, D.H. Nile, S.H. 2021. Novel insights on the multi-functional properties of flavonol glucosides from red onion (Allium cepa L) waste- In vitro and in silico approach. Food Chemistry, 335, 127650.
4. Zhang, Z. Hua, L. Lin, C. Yuan, M. Xu, W. Dhanapal, A.R. Venkidasamy, B. Cespedes-Acuña, C. L. Nile, S.H. 2022. Pien-Tze-Huang alleviates CCl4-induced liver fibrosis through inhibition of HSC autophagy and TGF-β1/Smad2 pathway. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 13: 937484
5. Nile, S.H. Thombre, D. Shelar, A. Gosavi, K. Sangshetti, J. Zhang, W. Sieniawska, E. Patil, R. Kai, G. 2023. Antifungal properties of biogenic selenium nanoparticles functionalized with nystatin for the inhibition of Candida albicans biofilm formation. Molecules, 28 (4), 1836, 1-16