Utilization of Lyotropic Liquid Crystalline Gels for Chronic Wound Management.

Management of chronic wounds is becoming a serious health problem worldwide. To treat chronic wounds, a suitable healing environment and sustained delivery of growth factors must be guaranteed. Different therapies have been applied for the treatment of chronic wounds such as debridement and photodynamic therapy. Among them, growth factors are widely used therapeutic drugs. However, at present, growth factor delivery systems cannot meet the demand of clinical practice; therefore new methods should be developed to meet the emerging need. For this reason, researchers have tried to modify hydrogels through some methods such as chemical synthesis and molecule modifications to enhance their properties. However, there are still a large number of limitations in practical use like byproduct problems, difficulty to industrialize, and instability of growth factor. Moreover, applications of new materials like lyotropic liquid crystalline (LLC) on chronic wounds have emerged as a new trend. The structure of LLC is endowed with many excellent properties including low cost, ordered structure, and excellent loading efficiency. LLC can provide a moist local environment for the wound, and its lattice structure can embed the growth factors in the water channel. Growth factor is released from the high-concentration carrier to the low-concentration release medium, which can be precisely regulated. Therefore, it can provide sustained and stable delivery of growth factors as well as a suitable healing environment for wounds, which is a promising candidate for chronic wound healing and has a broad prospective application. In conclusion, more reliable and applicable drug delivery systems should be designed and tested to improve the therapy and management of chronic wounds.

Engineered lipid liquid crystalline nanoparticles as an inhaled nanoplatform for mucus penetration enhancement.

Nanocarrier-assisted pulmonary drug delivery system has been widely employed for lung local disease treatment due to its enhanced drug lesion accumulation and reduced systematical side effects. However, the mucus barriers covered on the epithelia of trachea and bronchial tree construct a dense barrier for inhaled nanocarrier transport, which compromises the therapeutical effects. In this study, a lipid liquid crystalline nanoparticle NLP@Z with surface zwitterion material hexadecyl betaine (HB) modification and N-acetylcysteine (NAC) encapsulation was presented to exert the combination strategy of mucus-inert surface and mucus degradation. The HB modification endowed NLP@Z mucus-inert surface to inhibit the interaction between NLP@Z and mucins, and the encapsulated NAC could effectively degrade the mucins and further decrease the mucus viscosity. This combination strategy was proved to significantly promote the mucus penetration performance and enhance epithelial cell uptake. In addition, the proposed NLP@Z was equipped with desired nebulization property, which could be served as a potential pulmonary delivery nanoplatform. In summary, the proposed NLP@Z highlights the employment of the combination strategy for mucus penetration enhancement in pulmonary delivery, which may become a versatile platform for lung disease therapy.

Electrochemical behavior and voltammetric determination of theophylline at a glassy carbon electrode modified with graphene/nafion.

An ultrasensitive voltammetric sensor, a simply coated graphene-Na?on suspension on a glass carbon electrode surface, was fabricated and used to investigate the electrochemical behavior of theophylline as described in the present paper. The results indicated that this voltammetric sensor exhibited a special recognition capacity to determine theophylline as well as having high sensitivity due to the excellent characteristics of graphene and the adsorption action of Nafion for theophylline. Under the selected condition using differential pulse voltammetry, the response peak currents had a linear relationship with the theophylline concentrations in two ranges from 1.0 × 10(-8) - 1.0 × 10(-6) and 2.0 × 10(-6) - 3.0 × 10(-5) mol L(-1) with a low detection limit of 6.0 × 10(-9) mol L(-1). Moreover, according to the results obtained in the analysis of theophylline in two standard samples, it demonstrated the applicability of present method into real sample determination.

Electrochemical detection of dihydromyricetin using a DNA immobilized ethylenediamine/polyglutamic modified electrode.

A novel voltammetric sensor, based on DNA immobilized on the surface of an ethylenediamine/polyglutamic (En/PGA) modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE), was constructed and used for determination of dihydromyricetin (DMY). The electrochemical behaviour of DMY at this sensor was investigated in pH 3.6 NaAc-HAc buffer solutions by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse anodic voltammetry (DPV). The oxidation of DMY is an adsorption-controlled irreversible process. The oxidation mechanism was proposed and discussed. It was found that the modified electrode exhibited a linear voltammetric response for DMY in the range of 4.0 × 10(-8) mol L(-1) to 2 × 10(-6) mol L(-1), with a detection limit of 2 × 10(-8) mol L(-1). The method was also applied successfully to detect DMY in an ampelopsis sample with satisfactory results.