Diclofenac and naproxen analysis by microbore liquid chromatography (LC) with native fluorescence detection

A Bayesian Regularized Artificial Neural Network for Simultaneous Determination of Loratadine, Naproxen and Diclofenac in Wastewaters

Background::

Simultaneous determination of medication components in pharmaceutical samples using ordinary methods have some difficulties and therefore these determinations usually were made by expensive methods and instruments. Chemometric methods are an effective way to analyze several components simultaneously.

Objective::

In this paper, a novel approach based on Bayesian regularized artificial neural network is developed for the determination of Loratadine, Naproxen, and Diclofenac in water using UV-Vis spectroscopy.

Methods:

A dataset is collected by performing several chemical experiments and recording the UV-Vis spectra and actual constituent values. The effect of a different number of neurons in the hidden layer was analyzed based on final mean square error, and the optimum number was selected. Principle Component Analysis (PCA) was also applied to the data. Other back-propagation methods, such as Levenberg-Marquardt, scaled conjugate gradient, and resilient backpropagation, were tested.

Results::

In order to see the proposed network performance, it was performed on two crossvalidation methods, namely partitioning data into train and test parts, and leave-one-out technique. Mean square errors between expected results and predicted ones implied that the proposed method has a strong ability in predicting the expected values.

Conclusion::

he results showed that the Bayesian regularization algorithm has the best performance among other methods for simultaneous determination of Loratadine, Naproxen, and Diclofenac in water samples.

Electrospun poly-l-lactide scaffold for the controlled and targeted delivery of a synthetically obtained Diclofenac prodrug to treat actinic keratosis

Actinic Keratosis' (AKs) are small skin lesions that are related to a prolonged sun-damage, which can develop into invasive squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) when left untreated. Effective, specific and well tolerable therapies to cure AKs are still of great interest. Diclofenac (DCF) is the current gold standard for the local treatment of AKs in terms of costs, effectiveness, side effects and tolerability. In this work, an electrospun polylactic acid (PLA) scaffold loaded with a synthetic DCF prodrug was developed and characterized. Specifically, the prodrug was successfully synthetized by binding DCF to a glycine residue via solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) and then incorporated in an electrospun PLA scaffold. The drug encapsulation was verified using multiphoton microscopy (MPM) and its scaffold release was spectrophotometrically monitored and confirmed with MPM. The scaffold was further characterized with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), tensile testing and contact angle measurements. Its biocompatibility was verified by performing a cell proliferation assay and compared to PLA scaffolds containing the same amount of DCF sodium salt (DCFONa). Finally, the effect of the electrospun scaffolds on human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs) morphology and metabolism was investigated by combining MPM with fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). The obtained results suggest that the obtained scaffold could be suitable for the controlled and targeted delivery of the synthesized prodrug for the treatment of AKs.

STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE

Electrospun scaffolds are of growing interest as materials for a controlled drug delivery. In this work, an electrospun polylactic acid scaffold containing a synthetically obtained Diclofenac prodrug is proposed as a novel substrate for the topical treatment of actinic keratosis. A controlled drug delivery targeted to the area of interest could enhance the efficacy of the therapy and favor the healing process. The prodrug was synthesized via solid phase, employing a clean and versatile approach to obtain Diclofenac derivatives. Here, we used multiphoton microscopy to image drug encapsulation within the fibrous scaffold and fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy to investigate Diclofenac effects and potential mechanisms of action.