Current Advances in Nanotechnology-Mediated Delivery of Herbal and Plant-Derived Medicines.

Phytomedicine has been used by humans since ancient times to treat a variety of diseases. However, herbal medicines face significant challenges, including poor water and lipid solubility and instability, which lead to low bioavailability and insufficient therapeutic efficacy. Recently, it has been shown that nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems are appropriate to overcome the above-mentioned limitations. The present review study first discusses herbal medicines and the challenges involved in the formulation of these drugs. The different types of nano-based drug delivery systems used in herbal delivery and their potential to improve therapeutic efficacy are summarized, and common techniques for preparing nanocarriers used in herbal drug delivery are also discussed. Finally, a list of nanophyto medicines that have entered clinical trials since 2010, as well as those that the FDA has approved, is presented.

Solubility of CO2, H2S, and their mixture in the ionic liquid 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethyl)sulfonylimide.

Gaseous solubilities of carbon dioxide (1), hydrogen sulfide (2), and their binary mixture (x(2) ≈ 0.2, 0.5, 0.8) have been measured in the ionic liquid 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethyl)sulfonylimide ([C(8)mim][Tf(2)N]) at temperatures ranging from (303.15 to 353.15) K and at pressures under 2 MPa. The observed PTx solubility data were used to obtain Henry's law constants and correlated by three models: (1) the simple Krichevsky-Kasarnovsky (KK) equation, (2) a model comprised of the extended Henry's law and the Pitzer's virial expansion for the excess Gibbs free energy, and (3) the generic Redlich-Kwong (RK) cubic equation of state proposed for gas-ionic liquid systems. The correlations from the three models show quite good consistency with the experimental data for IL/CO(2) and IL/H(2)S binary mixtures within experimental uncertainties. For IL/CO(2)/H(2)S ternary mixtures, the RK model shows the best correlation with the experimental data. The comparison showed that the solubility of H(2)S is about two times as great as that of CO(2) in the ionic liquid studied in this work. It was further found, by comparison of the experimental data of this study with those of previous reports, that the solubility of H(2)S in [C(n)mim][Tf(2)N] ILs increases as the number of carbon atoms in the alkyl substituent of methylimidazolium cation, n, increases. In addition, quantum chemical calculations at DFT/B3LYP level of theory using 6-311+G(d) and 6-311++G(2d,2p) basis sets were performed on the isolated systems studied in this work to provide explanations from a molecular point of view for the observed experimental trends.