For millennia, civilizations have found refuge around its meandering banks and in its wide basin and have sustained agriculture through its vitalizing deposits of silt and sand. Its waters have largely encouraged segregated nomadic groups to live together as a community, but the sands of time have pushed communities out and apart, creating borders and boundaries, which has not only left the Indus basin at the mercy of myopic policies but also mismanaged resource utilization, intense cultivation making the whole basin highly water stressed and lacking energy security.

Now, a team of researchers including Dr. Abubakr Muhammad from the Center for Water Informatics and Technology (WIT), SBASSE, has revealed in a paper published in ‘Nature Sustainability’, that cooperation across the borders is needed as a potential route to make sustainable development in the Indus basin possible. Using NEST, an integrated model for water-energy-land-climate systems, an analysis was done that revealed cooperation between Indus basin countries can reduce investment from US$10 billion per annum to US$2 billion per annum by the year 2050, a whopping 80% reduction in investment!

The study compared 3 models i.e., business-as-usual (BAU), sustainable development goals without transboundary cooperation (SDG) and SDG-coop, where transboundary cooperation is implemented. If no action were taken, the team discovered overexploitation of water resources in the Punjab (both Indian and Pakistani) and Sindh regions can reach a staggering 250% of the current situation, where these regions are already facing water scarcity. The team suggests optimal crop shift and increased irrigation efficiency for reduction in irrigation surface, and the shift of electrical generation from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. The study hopes that Pakistan will be able to save US$5 billion per annum, if timely implementation on their model is exercised.

This study was published in Nature Sustainability and can be accessed here:

Vinca, A., Parkinson, S., Riahi, K. et al. Transboundary cooperation a potential route to sustainable development in the Indus basin. Nat Sustain (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-00654-7

The model code updated to scenarios described in this study is available here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4037884

A video outlining the study can be accessed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gIBvFSBVs0

The strength of a system is tested when it is passed through a test. We’re not divorced from this idea and regularly validate it through the act of living and survival. Unfortunately, when COVID-19 pandemic was nearing its peak in summer of 2020, our healthcare system was just not ready to handle the pressure of primary and secondary healthcare services including immediate bedside treatment and post-hospital patient care and management. A distraught public health system and disgruntled public – things need to change and there is hope!

That hope is Dr. Safee Ullah’s work which has been recognised through the prestigious Shahid Hussain Public Health Research Grant! This is great news because it means that Dr. Safee Ullah and his team will be able to develop a framework to seamlessly integrate healthcare data with all stakeholders of the health care system around the country and in doing so – help save millions of lives and financial resources!

Dr. Safee’s strategy relies on integration of healthcare data through the international system HL7 i.e. Health Level Seven International. This will be achieved through a three-pronged strategy; 1) Evaluation of compatibility of the HIMS (Health Management Information Systems) database, 2) Implementation of data adapter and 3) Demonstration of prototype.

Dr. Safee intends and hopes to work closely with Shalamar Hospital for exchange, storage and retrieval of health care information data to improve and strengthen the healthcare sector of the country. We congratulate and wish him success in this project!

Raise the fences – increase defenses. Block infiltration stop proliferation. These are one-point agendas that guide Dr. Shahzad ul Hussan’s latest work to arrest the workings of SARS-CoV-2 virus (more popularly known as ‘the coronavirus’ these days). Dr. Hussan is working to find a molecule that can bind to either of the viral proteins; RdRp, 3CL-protease and helicase, to help disable the sinister virus and its hopefully end its terrible reign.

However, first things first - our sincerest congratulations to Dr. Shahzad ul Hussan for receiving the Shahid Hussain Public Health Research Grant 2020, for “Discovery of New Potential Therapeutics Against Coronavirus by Targeting Viral Cellular Entry and Replication”. In simpler words, Dr. Hussan is looking to find ways to 1) prevent the entry of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into the human body and 2) stop it from multiplying if it gets inside.

Dr. Hussan established the Biochemistry and Structural Biology (BSB) lab at the Department of Biology, SBASSE, which helped his past work in discovery of drugs related to HIV and Hepatitis C. He believes this laboratory, and the grant he has received, shall help him conduct further research to figure out a that one killer molecule, disabling the normal workings of SARS-CoV-2. We wish Dr. Shahzad ul Hussan the very best in his search to find the ‘COVID killer’ molecule.

Our body works like a country – we have cells that carry out particular functions with some contributing to defense (white blood cells). One may think the greater the white blood cell count, safer the body. However, you may have heard of the moniker “excess of everything is bad”. It stands true with white blood cells too. Sometimes white blood cells are created in a much larger number, but they don’t seem to work right. Something goes awry in the production line and quantity takes over quality, abundance takes over function and blood cancer, called leukemia, begins its onset.

Leukemia relapse is observed in some patients, sometimes with deadly consequences, when a certain enzyme in these cancer cells is triggered. This ‘funny bone’ of cancer cells is the FLT3 enzyme. Ugly name for an ugly character! However, we can always trust nature to have all the elements of a well-balanced script. This is where the combined efforts of Haleema Sadia Malik and her team, including Dr. Amir Faisal and Dr. Rahman Saleem make a plot entry. The team figured out a way to ‘inject this enzyme with poison’ so that it stops working. They have discovered an enzyme inhibitor that targets specifically the FLT3 and even stops the process of reproduction within cancer cells that house this troublemaker of an enzyme. The inhibitor of ugly we’re referring to is Chalcone 4. Chalcone 4 - it has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Well, Haleema’s team will agree!

Researching on a family of Chalcones, Haleema and her team have learned that different types offer different blows to FLT3 with Chalcone 4 being a direct inhibitor of FLT3 – exactly what was needed.

The research paper was published in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Natural Products. 

Natural and Semisynthetic Chalcones as Dual FLT3 and Microtubule Polymerization Inhibitors - DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.0c00699

Reference: Haleema Sadia Malik, Aishah Bilal, Rahim Ullah, Maheen Iqbal, Sardraz Khan, Ishtiaq Ahmed, Karsten Krohn, Rahman Shah Zaib Saleem, Hidayat Hussain, and Amir Faisal