A review of recent advances of cellulose-based intelligent-responsive hydrogels as vehicles for controllable drug delivery system.

To realize the maximum therapeutic activity of medicine and protect the body from the adverse effects of active ingredients, drug delivery systems (DDS) featured with targeted transportation sites and controllable release have captured extensive attention over the past decades. Hydrogels with unique three-dimensional (3D) porous structures present tunable capacity, controllable degradation, various stimuli sensitivity, therapeutic agents encapsulation, and loaded drugs protection properties, which endow hydrogels with bred-in-the-bone advantages as vehicles for drug delivery. In recent years, with the impressive consciousness of the "back-to-nature" concept, biomass materials are becoming the 'rising star' as the hydrogels building blocks for controlled drug release carriers due to their biodegradability, biocompatibility, and non-toxicity properties. In particular, cellulose and its derivatives are promising candidates for fabricating hydrogels as their rich sources and high availability, and various smart cellulose-based hydrogels as targeted carriers under exogenous such as light, electric field, and magnetic field or endogenous such as pH, temperature, ionic strength, and redox gradients. In this review, we summarized the main synthetic strategies of smart cellulose-based hydrogels including physical and chemical cross-linking, and illustrated the detailed intelligent-responsive mechanism of hydrogels in DDS under external stimulus. Additionally, the ongoing development and challenges of cellulose-based hydrogels in the biomedical field are also presented.

Non-hypothetical projection pursuit regression for the prediction of hydration heat of Portland-cement-based cementitious system.

In this study, the non-hypothetical projection pursuit regression (NH-PPR) is proposed. The proposed NH-PPR model can predict the hydration heat based on the four cement phases, FA, SL, cement fineness and hydration time. The NH-PPR model is proposed by using the multiple layer iteration method and the non-hypothetical and non-parametric ridge functions to enhance accuracy and solve the problems caused by the parameter selection and the subjective hypothesis. The modeling data set is applied to train model, the testing data set is regressed and fitted into the model, and then the obtained results are compared with the BP model. To further validate the proposed model, another published data set is used to obtain a higher degree of confidence in the prediction. It is shown that the proposed model obtains the better accuracy, stability and versatility, and avoids the parameter selection and subjective hypothesis.

A robust regenerated cellulose-based dual stimuli-responsive hydrogel as an intelligent switch for controlled drug delivery.

Constructing robust hydrogels with biodegradability and dual stimuli-responsive by utilizing natural polymer as raw materials remains a sustaining challenge. Herein, we proposed an interpenetrating strategy in which N-isopropyl acrylamide (NIPAM) and acrylamide (AM) block copolymers were introduced as the second network into the carboxymethyl cellulose single network gel (CMC gel) to construct a dual-network robust hydrogel (CMC/PNIPAM-co-PAM). The dual-network design strategy effectively improves the mechanical strength of CMC gel. The hydrogel suggests intelligent dual stimuli-responsive behavior to pH and temperature. Furthermore, the copolymerization of NIPAM and AM regulated the low critical solution temperature (LCST) of the hybrid hydrogel, making it close to the physiological temperature of the human body. With the aim of evaluating its application in drug delivery, we loaded tetracycline into the dual-network hydrogel and simulated its release process under the pH microenvironment of the small intestine and the physiological temperature to infer its potential application in intestinal inflammation treatments. Moreover, it is proved that the strong hydrogel possesses good cytocompatibility in vitro biocompatibility testing. In addition, the embedding of tetracycline makes the hydrogel excellent antioxidant performance. This dual-stimulus response integrated hydrogel is expected to play a critical role in drug delivery and targeted therapy.

Efficient Extraction and Structural Characterization of Hemicellulose from Sugarcane Bagasse Pith.

The aim of this study was to investigate the ultrasound-assisted alkaline extraction process and structural properties of hemicellulose from sugarcane bagasse pith. Response surface model (RSM) was established in order to optimize the extraction conditions for the highest hemicellulose yield based on the single-factor experiments. A maximum total hemicellulose yield of 23.05% was obtained under the optimal conditions of ultrasonic treatment time of 28 min, KOH mass concentration of 3.7%, and extraction temperature of 53 °C, and it evidently increased 3.24% compared without ultrasound-assisted extraction. The obtained hemicellulose was analyzed by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The monosaccharide composition and average molecular weight of hemicellulose were characterized by using ion chromatography (IC) and gel permeation chromatography (GPC). The results indicated that xylose was dominant component in water-soluble hemicellulose (WH, 69.05%) and alkali-soluble hemicellulose (AH, 85.83%), respectively. Furthermore, the monosaccharides（otherwise xylose) and uronic acids contents of WH were higher than that of AH. Weight average molecular weight of WH was 29923 g/mol, lower than that of AH (74872 g/mol). These results indicate that ultrasonic-assisted alkaline extraction is an efficient approach for the separation of hemicellulose from sugarcane bagasse pith.

Combined liquid hot water with sodium carbonate-oxygen pretreatment to improve enzymatic saccharification of reed.

In this work, two-stage combination of liquid hot water (LHW) and Na2CO3-O2 pretreatment was performed efficiently on reed to obtain fermentable sugar. Reed was first treated with LHW at 170 °C for 60 min and then with Na2CO3-O2. The optimal conditions for Na2CO3-O2 pretreatment were as follow: reaction temperature of 150 °C, residence time of 40 min, Na2CO3 concentration of 33.3 g/L and oxygen pressure of 0.6 MPa. The total sugar yield of 79.1% was achieved with a cellulase of 20 FPU/g-pretreated solid for 48 h. The total sugar yield improved 36.0% compared with single Na2CO3-O2 pretreatment. The combined pretreatment could avoid the loss of carbohydrate degradation. The total sugar yield was increased by 48.6% compared to only LHW pretreatment. Owing to advantages of the combined pretreatment breaking the restraint of lignin and cellulose, LHW combined with Na2CO3-O2 pretreatment was a promising method for the production of fermentable sugar.