Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA)-Based Nanoniosome for Enhanced in vitro Delivery and Anticancer Activity of Thymol.

Introduction: There is an unmet need to develop potent therapeutics against cancer with minimal side effects and systemic toxicity. Thymol (TH) is an herbal medicine with anti-cancer properties that has been investigated scientifically. This study shows that TH induces apoptosis in cancerous cell lines such as MCF-7, AGS, and HepG2. Furthermore, this study reveals that TH can be encapsulated in a Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-coated niosome (Nio-TH/PVA) to enhance its stability and enable its controlled release as a model drug in the cancerous region. Materials and Methods: TH-loaded niosome (Nio-TH) was fabricated and optimized using Box-Behnken method and the size, polydispersity index (PDI) and entrapment efficiency (EE) were characterized by employing DLS, TEM and SEM, respectively. Additionally, in vitro drug release and kinetic studies were performed. Cytotoxicity, antiproliferative activity, and the mechanism were assessed by MTT assay, quantitative real-time PCR, flow cytometry, cell cycle, caspase activity evaluation, reactive oxygen species investigation, and cell migration assays. Results: This study demonstrated the exceptional stability of Nio-TH/PVA at 4 °C for two months and its pH-dependent release profile. It also showed its high toxicity on cancerous cell lines and high compatibility with HFF cells. It revealed the modulation of Caspase-3/Caspase-9, MMP-2/MMP-9 and Cyclin D/ Cyclin E genes by Nio-TH/PVA on the studied cell lines. It confirmed the induction of apoptosis by Nio-TH/PVA in flow cytometry, caspase activity, ROS level, and DAPI staining assays. It also verified the inhibition of metastasis by Nio-TH/PVA in migration assays. Conclusion: Overall, the results of this study revealed that Nio-TH/PVA may effectively transport hydrophobic drugs to cancer cells with a controlled-release profile to induce apoptosis while exhibiting no detectable side effects due to their biocompatibility with normal cells.

Constructing an Intelligent Model Based on Support Vector Regression to Simulate the Solubility of Drugs in Polymeric Media.

This study constructs a machine learning method to simultaneously analyze the thermodynamic behavior of many polymer-drug systems. The solubility temperature of Acetaminophen, Celecoxib, Chloramphenicol, D-Mannitol, Felodipine, Ibuprofen, Ibuprofen Sodium, Indomethacin, Itraconazole, Naproxen, Nifedipine, Paracetamol, Sulfadiazine, Sulfadimidine, Sulfamerazine, and Sulfathiazole in 1,3-bis[2-pyrrolidone-1-yl] butane, Polyvinyl Acetate, Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), PVP K12, PVP K15, PVP K17, PVP K25, PVP/VA, PVP/VA 335, PVP/VA 535, PVP/VA 635, PVP/VA 735, Soluplus analyzes from a modeling perspective. The least-squares support vector regression (LS-SVR) designs to approximate the solubility temperature of drugs in polymers from polymer and drug types and drug loading in polymers. The structure of this machine learning model is well-tuned by conducting trial and error on the kernel type (i.e., Gaussian, polynomial, and linear) and methods used for adjusting the LS-SVR coefficients (i.e., leave-one-out and 10-fold cross-validation scenarios). Results of the sensitivity analysis showed that the Gaussian kernel and 10-fold cross-validation is the best candidate for developing an LS-SVR for the given task. The built model yielded results consistent with 278 experimental samples reported in the literature. Indeed, the mean absolute relative deviation percent of 8.35 and 7.25 is achieved in the training and testing stages, respectively. The performance on the largest available dataset confirms its applicability. Such a reliable tool is essential for monitoring polymer-drug systems' stability and deliverability, especially for poorly soluble drugs in polymers, which can be further validated by adopting it to an actual implementation in the future.

Introducing a Linear Empirical Correlation for Predicting the Mass Heat Capacity of Biomaterials.

This study correlated biomass heat capacity (Cp) with the chemistry (sulfur and ash content), crystallinity index, and temperature of various samples. A five-parameter linear correlation predicted 576 biomass Cp samples from four different origins with the absolute average relative deviation (AARD%) of ~1.1%. The proportional reduction in error (REE) approved that ash and sulfur contents only enlarge the correlation and have little effect on the accuracy. Furthermore, the REE showed that the temperature effect on biomass heat capacity was stronger than on the crystallinity index. Consequently, a new three-parameter correlation utilizing crystallinity index and temperature was developed. This model was more straightforward than the five-parameter correlation and provided better predictions (AARD = 0.98%). The proposed three-parameter correlation predicted the heat capacity of four different biomass classes with residual errors between -0.02 to 0.02 J/g∙K. The literature related biomass Cp to temperature using quadratic and linear correlations, and ignored the effect of the chemistry of the samples. These quadratic and linear correlations predicted the biomass Cp of the available database with an AARD of 39.19% and 1.29%, respectively. Our proposed model was the first work incorporating sample chemistry in biomass Cp estimation.

Developing an accurate empirical correlation for predicting anti-cancer drugs' dissolution in supercritical carbon dioxide.

This study introduces a universal correlation based on the modified version of the Arrhenius equation to estimate the solubility of anti-cancer drugs in supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2). A combination of an Arrhenius-shape term and a departure function was proposed to estimate the solubility of anti-cancer drugs in supercritical CO2. This modified Arrhenius correlation predicts the solubility of anti-cancer drugs in supercritical CO2 from pressure, temperature, and carbon dioxide density. The pre-exponential of the Arrhenius linearly relates to the temperature and carbon dioxide density, and its exponential term is an inverse function of pressure. Moreover, the departure function linearly correlates with the natural logarithm of the ratio of carbon dioxide density to the temperature. The reliability of the proposed correlation is validated using all literature data for solubility of anti-cancer drugs in supercritical CO2. Furthermore, the predictive performance of the modified Arrhenius correlation is compared with ten available empirical correlations in the literature. Our developed correlation presents the absolute average relative deviation (AARD) of 9.54% for predicting 316 experimental measurements. On the other hand, the most accurate correlation in the literature presents the AARD = 14.90% over the same database. Indeed, 56.2% accuracy improvement in the solubility prediction of the anti-cancer drugs in supercritical CO2 is the primary outcome of the current study.