Microneedle-mediated drug delivery for scar prevention and treatment.

Scars are an inevitable natural outcome of most wound healing processes and affect skin functions, leading to cosmetic, psychological and social problems. Several strategies, including surgery, radiation, cryotherapy, laser therapy, pressure therapy and corticosteroids, can be used to either prevent or treat scars. However, these strategies are ineffective, have side effects and are typically expensive. Microneedle (MN) technology is a powerful, minimally invasive platform for transdermal drug delivery. This review discusses the most recent progress in MN-mediated drug delivery to prevent and treat pathological scars (hypertrophic and keloids). A comprehensive overview of existing challenges and future perspectives is also provided.

Facile sulfation of cellulose via recyclable ternary deep eutectic solvents for low-cost cellulose nanofibril preparation.

Here we present a new method to treat cellulose with a sulfamic acid-urea-choline chloride (ternary deep eutectic solvent) system, which can realize both swelling and sulfation of cellulose. This can greatly reduce the energy consumption in the process of cellulose nanoization, and use it to successfully prepare food packaging films for eliminating odors. We hope that due its simplicity and resource-efficiency, this method will have a widespread influence on currently used (nano) cellulose modification protocols.

Polymeric microneedles for enhanced drug delivery in cancer therapy.

Microneedles (MNs) have attracted the interest of researchers. Polymeric MNs offer tremendous promise as drug delivery vehicles for bio-applications because of their high loading capacity, strong patient adherence, excellent biodegradability and biocompatibility, low toxicity, and extremely cheap cost. Incorporating enhanced-property nanomaterials into polymeric MNs matrix increases their features such as better mechanical strength, sustained drug delivery, lower toxicity, and higher therapeutic effects, therefore considerably increasing their biomedical application. This paper discusses polymeric MN fabrication techniques and the present status of polymeric MNs as a delivery method for enhanced drug delivery in cancer therapeutic applications. Furthermore, the opportunities and challenges of polymeric MNs for improved drug delivery in cancer therapy are highlighted.

Comparison of Effects of Sodium Chloride and Potassium Chloride on Spray Drying and Redispersion of Cellulose Nanofibrils Suspension.

Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) were exposed to the same levels of potassium chloride (KCl) and sodium chloride (NaCl) before being subjected to spray drying. The effect of NaCl and KCl on the size of atomized droplets and the hydrogen bond retardation between CNFs was investigated by characterizing product morphology, particle size distribution, dispersion stability in aqueous system, and surface chemistry. The results showed that the CNF suspensions treated with KCl could be atomized into smaller droplets during spray drying, and then CNF powder with smaller sizes could be obtained. As the agglomeration was less, and the CNF with KCl addition had good dispersion stability after redispersion compared with CNF treated by NaCl. Therefore, KCl treatment was an effective method to reduce the agglomeration of CNF during spray drying.