 biggest challenge in research. In the near future, biodegradable microspheres will become the eco-friendly product for drug delivery of various genes, hormones, proteins and peptides at specific site of body for desired periods of time.
Gastric cancer has become a global pandemic and there is imperative to develop efficient therapies. Oral dosing strategy is the preferred route to deliver drugs for treating the disease. Recent studies suggested silk electro hydrogel, which is pH sensitive and reversible, has potential as a vehicle to deliver the drug in the stomach environment. The aim of this study is to establish in vitro electrogelation e-gel based silk gel as a gastroretentive drug delivery system. We successfully extended the duration of silk e-gel in artificial gastric juice by mixing silk solution with glycerol at different ratios before the electrogelation. Structural analysis indicated the extended duration was due to the change of beta sheet content. The glycerol mixed silk e-gel had good doxorubicin loading capability and could release doxorubicin in a sustained-release profile. Doxorubicin loaded silk e-gels were applied to human gastric cancer cells. Significant cell viability decrease was observed. We believe that with further characterization as well as functional analysis, the silk e-gel system has the potential to become an effective vehicle for gastric drug delivery applications.
Moothanchery, Mohesh; Seeni, Razina Z.; Xu, Chenjie; Pramanik, Manojit
Microneedle technology allows micron-sized conduits to be formed within the outermost skin layers for both localized and systemic delivery of therapeutics including nanoparticles. Histological methods are often employed for characterization, and unfortunately do not allow for the in vivo visualization of the delivery process. This study presents the utilization of optical resolution-photoacoustic microscopy to characterize the transdermal delivery of nanoparticles using microneedles. Specifically, we observe the in vivo transdermal delivery of gold nanoparticles using microneedles in mice ear and study the penetration, diffusion, and spatial distribution of the nanoparticles in the tissue. The promising results reveal that photoacoustic microscopy can be used as a potential imaging modality for the in vivo characterization of microneedles based drug delivery. PMID:29296482
This thesis is focused on the design, synthesis and characterization of magnetite-ionic copolymer complexes as nanocarriers for drug delivery and magnetic resonance imaging. The polymers included phosphonate and carboxylate-containing graft and block copolymers. Oleic-acid coated magnetite nanoparticles (8-nm and 16-nm diameters) were investigated. Cisplatin and carboplatin were used as sample drugs. The potentials of the magnetite-ionomer complexes as dual drug delivery carriers and magneti...
Athuluri Divakar Sai Krishna
Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Cancerous state is a highly stimulated environment of metabolically active cells. The cells under these conditions over express selective receptors for assimilation of factors essential for growth and transformation. Such receptors would serve as potential targets for the specific ligand mediated transport of pharmaceutically active molecules. The present study demonstrates the specificity and efficacy of protein nanoparticle of apotransferrin for targeted delivery of doxorubicin. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Apotransferrin nanoparticles were developed by sol-oil chemistry. A comparative analysis of efficiency of drug delivery in conjugated and non-conjugated forms of doxorubicin to apotransferrin nanoparticle is presented. The spherical shaped apotransferrin nanoparticles (nano have diameters of 25-50 etam, which increase to 60-80 etam upon direct loading of drug (direct-nano, and showed further increase in dimension (75-95 etam in conjugated nanoparticles (conj-nano. The competitive experiments with the transferrin receptor specific antibody showed the entry of both conj-nano and direct-nano into the cells through transferrin recepto