PLGA Nanoparticles as New Drug Delivery Systems in Leishmaniasis Chemotherapy: A Review of Current Practices.

Although leishmaniasis is one of the most common parasitic diseases, its traditional treatments suffer from some serious problems. To solve such issues, we can take advantage of the effective nanoparticle-based approaches to deliver anti-leishmanial agents into leishmania-infected macrophages either using passive targeting or using macrophage-related receptors. Despite the high potential of nanotechnology, Liposomal Amphotericin B (AmBisome®) is the only FDA-approved nanoparticle-based anti-leishmanial therapy. In an effort to find more anti-leishmanial nano-drugs, this 2011-2021 review study aimed to investigate the in-vivo and in-vitro effectiveness of poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanoparticles (PLGA-NPs) in the delivery of some traditional anti-leishmanial drugs. Based on the results, PLGA-NPs could improve solubility, controlled release, trapping efficacy, bioavailability, selectivity, and mucosal penetration of the drugs, while they decreased resistance, dose/duration of administration and organotoxicity of the agents. However, none of these nano-formulations have been able to enter clinical trials so far. We summarized the data about the common problems of anti-leishmanial agents and the positive effects of various PLGA nano-formulations on reducing these drawbacks under both in-vitro and in-vitro conditions in three separate tables. Overall, this study proposes two AmB-loaded PLGA with a 99% reduction in parasite load as promising nanoparticles for further studies.

Green preparation, characterization, evaluation of anti-melanogenesis effect and in vitro/in vivo safety profile of kojic acid hydrogel as skin lightener formulation.

The local treatment of kojic acid (KA) as a tyrosinase inhibitor results in inadequate skin absorption and a number of side effects. The current study aims to maximize KA skin delivery. To produce KA-hydrogel, 1% KA was injected into a Chitosan/alginate hydrogel. The impacts of biopolymer proportion on the KA-hydrogel preparations were investigated. Swelling analysis, weight loss analysis, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV absorption spectroscopy, attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy were used to evaluate the KA-hydrogel. The swelling percentages of KA-hydrogel increased significantly after 4 h. After two weeks, up to 60% of the primary mass of the KA- hydrogel has been removed. By alternation in biopolymer proportion, the drug release profile of KA-hydrogel demonstrated a sustained pattern. According to the skin absorption experiment, KA-hydrogel had higher skin deposition (25.630 ± 3.350%) than KA-plain gel (5.170 ± 0.340%). Moreover, an in vitro cytotoxicity analysis for the modified KA-hydrogel preparations revealed no cytotoxic effects on HFF cell line (90%). Moreover, KA hydrogel had inhibitory effect on melanin synthesis and are comparable with KA. Furthermore, KA-hydrogel had higher inhibitory effect on L-dopa auto oxidation (94.84 ± 2.41%) in comparison KA solution (73.95 ± 3.28%). Also, the dermal irritation study on Wistar rat revealed that the hydrogel constituent used did not irritate the skin. These results revealed that the KA-hydrogel might be employed as KA local administration, thus opening up new prospects for the therapies of hyperpigmentation problems.

Antibody Fragment and Targeted Colorectal Cancer Therapy: A Global Systematic Review.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Antibody-based therapeutics have been shown to be promising for the treatment of colorectal cancer patients. However, the size and long-circulating half-lives of antibodies can limit their reproducible manufacture in clinical studies. Consequently, in novel therapeutic approaches, conventional antibodies are minimized and engineered to produce fragments like Fab, scFv, nanobody, bifunctional antibody, bispecific antibody, minibody, and diabody to preserve their high affinity and specificity to target pharmaceutical nanoparticle conjugates. This systematic review for the first time aimed to elucidate the role of various antibody fragments in colorectal cancer treatment. METHODS: A systematic literature search in the web of sciences, PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, and ProQuest was conducted. Reference lists of the articles were reviewed to identify the relevant papers. The full-text search included articles published in English during 19902021. RESULTS: Most of the 53 included studies were conducted in vitro and in most conducted studies singlechain antibodies were among the most used antibody fragments. Most antibodies targeted CEA in the treatment of colorectal cancer. Moreover, a large number of studies observed apoptosis induction and tumor growth inhibition. In addition, few studies implicated the role of the innate immune system as an indirect mechanism of tumor growth by enhancing NK-cell killing. CONCLUSION: Antibody-based therapy was demonstrated to be of great promise in the treatment of colorectal cancer rather than common treatments such as radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgical operations. This type of specified cancer treatment can also induce the activation of the innate and specific immune systems to eradicate tumor cells.

Sandblasting improves the performance of electrodes of miniature electrical impedance tomography via double layer capacitance.

Effect of sandblasting of the copper electrode structures before deposition of gold thin film for micro electrical impedance tomography (EIT) system has been studied experimentally. The comparison has been performed on the unmodified copper electrodes and the sandblasted electrodes before deposition of gold layer, using structural analysis while their performance in EIT system has been measured and analyzed. The results of scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy show that the sandblasting of the electrodes results in the deposition of gold film with smaller grain size and uniformly, comparing to the unmodified structure. The measurement of impedance shows that the sandblasting will increase the double layer capacitance of electrode structure which improves the impedance measurement accordingly.