A New Detection Method of Oral and Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma Based on Multivariate Analysis of Surface Enhanced Raman Spectra of Salivary Exosomes.

Raman spectroscopy recently proved a tremendous capacity to identify disease-specific markers in various (bio)samples being a non-invasive, rapid, and reliable method for cancer detection. In this study, we first aimed to record vibrational spectra of salivary exosomes isolated from oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma patients and healthy controls using surface enhancement Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Then, we assessed this method's capacity to discriminate between malignant and non-malignant samples by means of principal component-linear discriminant analysis (PC-LDA) and we used area under the receiver operating characteristics with illustration as the area under the curve to measure the power of salivary exosomes SERS spectra analysis to identify cancer presence. The vibrational spectra were collected on a solid plasmonic substrate developed in our group, synthesized using tangential flow filtered and concentrated silver nanoparticles, capable of generating very reproducible spectra for a whole range of bioanalytes. SERS examination identified interesting variations in the vibrational bands assigned to thiocyanate, proteins, and nucleic acids between the saliva of cancer and control groups. Chemometric analysis indicated discrimination sensitivity between the two groups up to 79.3%. The sensitivity is influenced by the spectral interval used for the multivariate analysis, being lower (75.9%) when the full-range spectra were used.

Electrospun amorphous solid dispersions of meloxicam: Influence of polymer type and downstream processing to orodispersible dosage forms.

The objectives of this work were to develop meloxicam based amorphous solid dispersion through electrospinning technique and evaluate the effect of the polymeric matrix on the physicochemical properties of the fibers and the downstream processing ability to orodispersible dosage forms. Drug - polymer interactions formed between Eudragit E and meloxicam, confirmed through Raman and 1HNMR spectra, enabled the development of fibers from ethanol, thus allowing an increased production rate compared to PVPk30 where a DMF:THF solvent system was suitable. Microflux dissolution-permeation studies showed a significantly higher diffusion from amorphous solid dispersions compared to crystalline meloxicam. The flux through the membrane was influenced by the polymers only under basic conditions, where the precipitation of Eudragit E limited the complete resolubilization of the active ingredient. This phenomenon was not observed during large volume conventional dissolution testing. The effect of formulation on long term stability could not be highlighted as all products were stable up to 15 months, stored in closed holders at 25 °C ±â€¯2 °C and 50%RH ±â€¯10%. The increased surface area of fibers enabled tablet preparation with low pressures due to favorable bonding between particles during compression. PVPk30 formulation presented higher tabletability and compactability, as higher tensile strength compacts could be prepared. Eudragit E formulation had lower detachment and ejection stress, suggesting a lower sticking tendency during tableting. The presence of HPßCD in PVPk30 formulation offered improved morphological features of the fibers, however no significant effect was observed on dissolution, permeation or mechanical properties. Downstream processing was guided by polymer mechanical properties and solubility, thus PVPk30 fibers could be delivered in the form of orodispersible webs and conventional tablets, whereas Eudragit E fibers as orodispersible tablets.