Novel multi-responsive and sugarcane bagasse cellulose-based nanogels for controllable release of doxorubicin hydrochloride

Tailor-Made Polysaccharides for Biomedical Applications

Polysaccharides (PSAs) are carbohydrate-based macromolecules widely used in the biomedical field, either in their pure form or in blends/nanocomposites with other materials. The relationship between structure, properties, and functions has inspired scientists to design multifunctional PSAs for various biomedical applications by incorporating unique molecular structures and targeted bulk properties. Multiple strategies, such as conjugation, grafting, cross-linking, and functionalization, have been explored to control their mechanical properties, electrical conductivity, hydrophilicity, degradability, rheological features, and stimuli-responsiveness. For instance, custom-made PSAs are known for their worldwide biomedical applications in tissue engineering, drug/gene delivery, and regenerative medicine. Furthermore, the remarkable advancements in supramolecular engineering and chemistry have paved the way for mission-oriented biomaterial synthesis and the fabrication of customized biomaterials. These materials can synergistically combine the benefits of biology and chemistry to tackle important biomedical questions. Herein, we categorize and summarize PSAs based on their synthesis methods, and explore the main strategies used to customize their chemical structures. We then highlight various properties of PSAs using practical examples. Lastly, we thoroughly describe the biomedical applications of tailor-made PSAs, along with their current existing challenges and potential future directions.

A review on revolutionizing ophthalmic therapy: Unveiling the potential of chitosan, hyaluronic acid, cellulose, cyclodextrin, and poloxamer in eye disease treatments

Ocular disorders, encompassing both common ailments like dry eye syndrome and more severe situations for instance age-related macular degeneration, present significant challenges to effective treatment due to the intricate architecture and physiological barriers of the eye. Polysaccharides are emerging as potential solutions for drug delivery to the eyes due to their compatibility with living organisms, natural biodegradability, and adhesive properties. In this review, we explore not only the recent advancements in polysaccharide-based technologies and their transformative potential in treating ocular illnesses, offering renewed optimism for both patients and professionals but also anatomy of the eye and the significant obstacles hindering drug transportation, followed by an investigation into various drug administration methods and their ability to overcome ocular-specific challenges. Our focus lies on biological adhesive polymers, including chitosan, hyaluronic acid, cellulose, cyclodextrin, and poloxamer, known for their adhesive characteristics enhancing drug retention on ocular surfaces and increasing bioavailability. A detailed analysis of material designs used in ophthalmic formulations, such as gels, lenses, eye drops, nanofibers, microneedles, microspheres, and nanoparticles, their advantages and limitations, the potential of formulations in improving therapeutic outcomes for various eye conditions. Moreover, we underscore the discovery of novel polysaccharides and their potential uses in ocular drug delivery.

Applications and advancements of polysaccharide-based nanostructures for enhanced drug delivery

Growing demand for highly effective, site-specific delivery of pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals using nano-sized carriers has prompted increased scrutiny of carrier biocompatibility and biodegradability. To address these concerns, biodegradable natural polymers have emerged as a transformative domain, offering non-toxic, precisely targetable carriers capable of finely modulating cargo pharmacokinetics while generating innocuous decomposition by-products. This comprehensive review illuminates the emergence of polysaccharide-based nanoparticulate drug delivery systems. These systems establish an interactive interface between drug and targeted organs, guided by strategic modifications to polysaccharide backbones, which facilitate the creation of morphologically, constitutionally, and characteristically vibrant nanostructures through various fabrication routes, underpinning their pivotal role in biomedical applications. Advancements crucial to enhancing polysaccharide-based drug delivery, such as surface modifications and bioinspired modifications for enhanced targeting, and stimuli-responsive release, strategies to overcome biological barriers, enhance tumor penetration, and optimize therapeutic outcomes are highlighted. This review also examines some potent challenges, and the contemporary way out of them, and discusses future perspectives in the field.

A review of recent advances of cellulose-based intelligent-responsive hydrogels as vehicles for controllable drug delivery system

To realize the maximum therapeutic activity of medicine and protect the body from the adverse effects of active ingredients, drug delivery systems (DDS) featured with targeted transportation sites and controllable release have captured extensive attention over the past decades. Hydrogels with unique three-dimensional (3D) porous structures present tunable capacity, controllable degradation, various stimuli sensitivity, therapeutic agents encapsulation, and loaded drugs protection properties, which endow hydrogels with bred-in-the-bone advantages as vehicles for drug delivery. In recent years, with the impressive consciousness of the "back-to-nature" concept, biomass materials are becoming the 'rising star' as the hydrogels building blocks for controlled drug release carriers due to their biodegradability, biocompatibility, and non-toxicity properties. In particular, cellulose and its derivatives are promising candidates for fabricating hydrogels as their rich sources and high availability, and various smart cellulose-based hydrogels as targeted carriers under exogenous such as light, electric field, and magnetic field or endogenous such as pH, temperature, ionic strength, and redox gradients. In this review, we summarized the main synthetic strategies of smart cellulose-based hydrogels including physical and chemical cross-linking, and illustrated the detailed intelligent-responsive mechanism of hydrogels in DDS under external stimulus. Additionally, the ongoing development and challenges of cellulose-based hydrogels in the biomedical field are also presented.

Single-, Dual-, and Multi-Stimuli-Responsive Nanogels for Biomedical Applications

In recent years, stimuli-responsive nanogels that can undergo suitable transitions under endogenous (e.g., pH, enzymes and reduction) or exogenous stimuli (e.g., temperature, light, and magnetic fields) for on-demand drug delivery, have received significant interest in biomedical fields, including drug delivery, tissue engineering, wound healing, and gene therapy due to their unique environment-sensitive properties. Furthermore, these nanogels have become very popular due to some of their special properties such as good hydrophilicity, high drug loading efficiency, flexibility, and excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability. In this article, the authors discuss current developments in the synthesis, properties, and biomedical applications of stimulus-responsive nanogels. In addition, the opportunities and challenges of nanogels for biomedical applications are also briefly predicted.

Smart stimuli-responsive polysaccharide nanohydrogels for drug delivery: a review

Polysaccharides have found extensive utilization as biomaterials in drug delivery systems owing to their remarkable biocompatibility, simple functionalization, and inherent biological properties. Within the array of polysaccharide-based biomaterials, there is a growing fascination for self-assembled polysaccharide nanogels (NG) due to their ease of preparation and enhanced appeal across diverse biomedical appliances. Nanogel (or nanohydrogel), networks of nanoscale dimensions, are created by physically or chemically linking polymers together and have garnered immense interest as potential carriers for delivering drugs due to their favorable attributes. These include biocompatibility, high stability, the ability to adjust particle size, the capacity to load drugs, and their inherent potential to modify their surface to actively target specific cells or tissues via the attachment of ligands that can recognize corresponding receptors. Nanogels can be engineered to respond to specific stimuli, such as pH, temperature, light, or redox conditions, allowing controlled release of the encapsulated drugs. This intelligent targeting capability helps prevent drug accumulation in unintended tissues and reduces the potential side effects. Herein, an overview of nanogels is offered, comprising their methods of preparation and the design of stimulus-responsive nanogels that enable controlled release of drugs in response to specific stimuli.

Polysaccharide-Based Nanogels to Overcome Mucus, Skin, Cornea, and Blood-Brain Barriers: A Review

Nanocarriers have been extensively developed in the biomedical field to enhance the treatment of various diseases. However, to effectively deliver therapeutic agents to desired target tissues and enhance their pharmacological activity, these nanocarriers must overcome biological barriers, such as mucus gel, skin, cornea, and blood-brain barriers. Polysaccharides possess qualities such as excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability, unique biological properties, and good accessibility, making them ideal materials for constructing drug delivery carriers. Nanogels, as a novel drug delivery platform, consist of three-dimensional polymer networks at the nanoscale, offering a promising strategy for encapsulating different pharmaceutical agents, prolonging retention time, and enhancing penetration. These attractive properties offer great potential for the utilization of polysaccharide-based nanogels as drug delivery systems to overcome biological barriers. Hence, this review discusses the properties of various barriers and the associated constraints, followed by summarizing the most recent development of polysaccharide-based nanogels in drug delivery to overcome biological barriers. It is expected to provide inspiration and motivation for better design and development of polysaccharide-based drug delivery systems to enhance bioavailability and efficacy while minimizing side effects.

Preparation of pH-responsive magnetic nanocomposite hydrogels based on k-carrageenan/chitosan/silver nanoparticles: Antibacterial carrier for potential targeted anticancer drug delivery

This study reports the development of new pH-responsive drug delivery systems that are important for the treatment of cancer. The Mentha plant extract was obtained and then used for the biosynthesis of magnetic Ag bio nanoparticles (M-Ag bio-NPs). They were added in the formulation of hybrid hydrogel of k-carrageenan (k-Cr) and chitosan (CS) toward the synthesis of magnetic nanocomposite hydrogels. Their chemical structure and morphology were characterized by different analyses. Doxorubicin (DOX) was used as a model anticancer drug to study the targeted drug release behavior of the synthesized nanocomposite hydrogels (loading capacity: about 98 %). In vitro drug release studies showed that the release profile was noticeably controlled in a pH-dependent manner (higher drug release at pH 5). The antibacterial assessment confirmed the high antibacterial activity for the synthesized hydrogel against S. aureus (MIC values 39.06 μg/mL) and E. coli (MIC values > 19.53). In-vitro cytotoxicity results (MTT assay) demonstrated good biocompatibility (higher than 88 %) for the blank nanocomposite hydrogels, while DOX-loaded nanocomposite hydrogels showed high toxicity (about 22 % in the concentration of 20 μg/mL) against HeLa cells. The results showed that the present nanocomposite hydrogels can be suggested for potential application as an antibacterial and anticancer carrier.

Nanocellulose-based drug carriers: Functional design, controllable synthesis, and therapeutic applications

With rising living standards and environmental awareness, materials-oriented chemical engineering has increasingly transitioned from traditional rough models to more resource-saving and eco-friendly models, providing an avenue for bio-based materials in the drug carrier field. Because of its excellent physical and chemical properties, including high specific surface area, abundant accessible hydroxyl groups, biocompatibility, and degradability, nanocellulose (NC) is an emerging bio-based material that has been widely exploited as biomedical materials. The modification techniques of NC, as well as advancements in the design and applications of drug carriers, were primarily discussed in this study. First, the NC modification methods are described; second, the applications of NC and its derivatives as drug carriers are summarized, focusing on NC-based carrier models, types of loaded therapeutic agents, and controlled release stimulators; and finally, the current challenges of NC in the drug carrier field and the directions of future research are also discussed.

Nanogels as target drug delivery systems in cancer therapy: A review of the last decade

Cancer is an important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, irrespective of the level of human development. Globally, it was estimated that there were 19.3 million new cases of cancer and almost 10 million deaths from cancer in 2020. The importance of prevention, early detection as well as effective cancer therapies cannot be over-emphasized. One of the important strategies in cancer therapy is targeted drug delivery to the specific tumor sites. Nanogels are among the several drug delivery systems (DDS) being explored as potential candidates for targeted drug delivery in cancer therapy. Nanogels, which are new generation, versatile DDS with the possession of dual characteristics of hydrogels and nanoparticles have shown great potential as targeted DDS in cancer therapy. Nanogels are hydrogels with a three-dimensional (3D) tunable porous structure and a particle size in the nanometre range, from 20 to 200 nm. They have been visualized as ideal DDS with enormous drug loading capacity, and high stability. Nanogels can be modified to achieve active targeting and enhance drug accumulation in disease sites. They can be designed to be stimulus-responsive, and react to internal or external stimuli such as pH, temperature, light, redox, thus resulting in the controlled release of loaded drug. This prevents drug accumulation in non-target tissues and minimizes the side effects of the drug. Drugs with severe adverse effects, short circulation half-life, and easy degradability by enzymes, such as anti-cancer drugs, and proteins, are suitable for delivery by chemically cross-linked or physically assembled nanogel systems. This systematic review summarizes the evolution of nanogels for targeted drug delivery for cancer therapy over the last decade. On-going clinical trials and recent applications of nanogels as targeted DDS for cancer therapy will be discussed in detail. The review will be concluded with discussions on safety and regulatory considerations as well as future research prospects of nanogel-targeted drug delivery for cancer therapy.

Doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity: causative factors and possible interventions

OBJECTIVES

Doxorubicin (Dox) belongs to the anthracycline drug classification and is a widely administered chemotherapeutic. However, Dox use in therapy is limited by its cardiotoxicity, representing a significant drawback of Dox treatment applicability. A large amount of current research is on reducing Dox-induced cardiotoxicity by developing targeted delivery systems and investigating cardiotoxicity mechanisms. Recently, discrepancies have challenged the traditional understanding of Dox metabolism, mechanisms of action and cardiotoxicity drivers. This review summarises the current knowledge around Dox's metabolism, mechanisms of anticancer activity, and delivery systems and offers a unique perspective on the relationships between several proposed mechanisms of Dox-induced cardiotoxicity.

KEY FINDINGS

While there is a strong understanding of Dox's pharmacokinetic properties, it is unclear which enzymes contribute to Dox metabolism and how Dox induces its cytotoxic effect in neoplastic and non-neoplastic cells. Evidence suggests that there are several potentially synergistic mechanisms involved in Dox-induced cardiotoxicity.

SUMMARY

It has become clear that Dox operates in a multifactorial fashion dependent on cellular context. Accumulation of oxidative stress appears to be a common factor in cardiotoxicity mechanisms, highlighting the importance of novel delivery systems and antioxidant therapies.

Stimuli-Responsive Electrochemical Energy Storage Devices

Electrochemical energy storage (EES) devices have been swiftly developed in recent years. Stimuli-responsive EES devices that respond to different external stimuli are considered the most advanced EES devices. The stimuli-responsive EES devices enhanced the performance and applications of the EES devices. The capability of the EES devices to respond to the various external stimuli due to produced advanced EES devices that distinguished the best performance and interactions in different situations. The stimuli-responsive EES devices have responsive behavior to different external stimuli including chemical compounds, electricity, photons, mechanical tensions, and temperature. All of these advanced responsiveness behaviors have originated from the functionality and specific structure of the EES devices. The multi-responsive EES devices have been recognized as the next generation of stimuli-responsive EES devices. There are two main steps in developing stimuli-responsive EES devices in the future. The first step is the combination of the economical, environmental, electrochemical, and multi-responsiveness priorities in an EES device. The second step is obtaining some advanced properties such as biocompatibility, flexibility, stretchability, transparency, and wearability in novel stimuli-responsive EES devices. Future studies on stimuli-responsive EES devices will be allocated to merging these significant two steps to improve the performance of the stimuli-responsive EES devices to challenge complicated situations.

Sugarcane cellulose-based composite hydrogel enhanced by g-C3N4 nanosheet for selective removal of organic dyes from water

The effective removal of toxic dyes from aqueous solution is of great significance for environmental protection. Herein, an eco-friendly sugarcane cellulose (SBC)/sodium carboxymethylcellulose (CMC-Na) adsorbent reinforced with carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) was successfully prepared via a facile sol-gel method. The resulting gel-like adsorbent or composite hydrogel was comprehensively characterized with FTIR, SEM, EDS, TGA analysis. The adsorption behaviors of the adsorbent in the removal of methylene blue (MB) were systematically investigated. Results showed the pseudo-second-order kinetic model and Langmuir model described adsorption process accurately with the maximum adsorption capacity of 362.3 mg g^-1, indicating that adsorption behavior is a monolayer chemical adsorption. Moreover, the composited hydrogel displayed excellent adsorption selectivity on MB/MO or MB/RhB mixed dyes. In addition, adsorbent showed great stability and reusability with almost no loss in adsorption capacity after 7 cycles. Due to the facile preparation process and outstanding mechanical properties, as well as high recyclability, g-C₃N₄@SBC/CMC has great potential in wastewater treatment.

Sensing beyond Senses: An Overview of Outstanding Strides in Architecting Nanopolymer-Enabled Sensors for Biomedical Applications

Nano-enabled sensing is an expanding interdisciplinary field of emerging science with dynamic multifunctional detecting capabilities, equipped with a wide range of multi-faceted nanomaterial having diverse dimensions and composition. They have proven to be highly robust, sensitive, and useful diagnostic tools ranging from advanced industrial processes to ordinary consumer products. As no single nanomaterial has proved to be unparalleled, recent years has witnessed a large number of nanomaterial-based sensing strategies for rapid detection and quantification of processes and substances with a high degree of reliability. Nano-furnished platforms, because of easy fabrication methods and chemical versatility, can serve as ideal sensing means through different transduction mechanisms. This article, through a unified experimental-theoretical approach, uses literature of recent years to introduce, evaluate, and analyze significant developments in the area of nanotechnology-aided sensors incorporating the various classes of nanomaterial. Addressing the broad interests, the work also summarizes the sensing mechanisms using schematic illustrations, attempts to integrate the performance of different categories of nanomaterials in the design of sensors, knowledge gaps, regulatory aspects, future research directions, and challenges of implementing such techniques in standalone devices. In view of a dependency of analysis and testing on sustained growth of sensor-supported platforms, this article inspires the scientific community for more attention in this field.

Cellulose: A Fascinating Biopolymer for Hydrogel Synthesis

The growing environmental concerns and increasing demands for eco-friendly materials have obliged researchers worldwide to explore naturally occurring biopolymers for various applications. Cellulose is a non-exhaustible polysaccharide biopolymer available almost...

Strategic Design of Intelligent-Responsive Nanogel Carriers for Cancer Therapy

Owing to the distinctive constituents of tumor tissue from those healthy organs, nanomedicine strategies show significant potentials in smart drug delivery. Nowadays, stimuli-responsive nanogels are playing increasingly important roles in the application of cancer therapy because of their sensitivity to various internal or external physicochemical stimuli, which exhibit site-specific and markedly enhanced drug release. Besides, nanogels are promising as drug carriers because of their porous structures, good biocompatibility, large surface area, and excellent capability with drugs. Taking advantage of multiresponsiveness, recent years have witnessed the rapid evolution of stimulus-responsive nanogels from monoresponsive to multiresponsive systems; however, there lacks a comprehensive review summarizing these reports. In this Review, we discuss the properties, synthesis, and characterization of nanogels. Moreover, tumor microenvironment and corresponding designing strategies for stimuli-response nanogels, both exogenous (temperature, magnetic field, light) and endogenous (pH, biomolecular, redox, ROS, pressure, hypoxia) are summarized on the basis of the recent advances in multistimuli-responsive nanogel systems. Nanogel and two-dimensional material composites show excellent performance in the field of constructing multistimulus-responsive nanoparticles and precise intelligent drug release integrated system for multimodal cancer diagnosis and therapy. Finally, potential progresses and suggestions are provided for the further design of hybrid nanogels based on emerging two-dimensional materials.

Synthesis of a pH-responsive nano-cellulose/sodium alginate/MOFs hydrogel and its application in the regulation of water and N-fertilizer

In order to circumvent the water eutrophication caused by nitrogen loss in agriculture, slow-release and high-water containing fertilizers have captured much attention. Considering the unstable release of traditional slow-released fertilizers, novel strategies need to be designed to meet the steady release of fertilizers. Herein, by integrating cellulose-based hydrogel with MIL-100(Fe), a pH-sensitive Cellulose/MOFs hydrogel (CAM) with a high surface area (45.25 m²/g) was devised. The volume changes and the water adsorption of the hydrogels were uncovered from pH 3 to pH 11, where the highest water adsorption (100 g/g) was achieved at pH 11. Besides, a pH-sensitive urea slow release fertilizer (U-CAM) was also designed. The urea release of the U-CAM at pH 11 was much slower than that of the U-CAM at pH 3, which indicated its potential application in arid regions. In parallel with a favorable water-holding capacity, the totally loss of the soil moisture loaded with U-CAM was slowed down by 18 days as compared with the pure soil. The positive effect of the U-CAM on the growth of wheat was indexed with the germination rate, number of tillers, photosynthetic rate and chlorophyll content of the crop, which verified their further application in irrigating farming.

Nanogels as a Versatile Drug Delivery System for Brain Cancer

Chemotherapy and radiation remain as mainstays in the treatment of a variety of cancers globally, yet some therapies exhibit limited specificity and result in harsh side effects in patients. Brain tissue differs from other tissue due to restrictions from the blood-brain barrier, thus systemic treatment options are limited. The focus of this review is on nanogels as local and systemic drug delivery systems in the treatment of brain cancer. Nanogels are a unique local or systemic drug delivery system that is tailorable and consists of a three-dimensional polymeric network formed via physical or chemical assembly. For example, thermosensitive nanogels show promise in their ability to incorporate therapeutic agents in nano-structured matrices, be applied in the forms of sprays or sols to the area from which a tumor has been removed, form adhesive gels to fill the cavity and deliver treatment locally. Their usage does come with complications, such as handling, storage, chemical stability, and degradation. Despite these limitations, the current ongoing development of nanogels allows patient-centered treatment that can be considered as a promising tool for the management of brain cancer.

Doxorubicin-Loaded Gold Nanoarchitectures as a Therapeutic Strategy against Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma

Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Gliomas (DIPGs) are highly aggressive paediatric brain tumours. Currently, irradiation is the only standard treatment, but is palliative in nature and most patients die within 12 months of diagnosis. Novel therapeutic approaches are urgently needed for the treatment of this devastating disease. We have developed non-persistent gold nano-architectures (NAs) functionalised with human serum albumin (HSA) for the delivery of doxorubicin. Doxorubicin has been previously reported to be cytotoxic in DIPG cells. In this study, we have preclinically evaluated the cytotoxic efficacy of doxorubicin delivered through gold nanoarchitectures (NAs-HSA-Dox). We found that DIPG neurospheres were equally sensitive to doxorubicin and doxorubicin-loaded NAs. Colony formation assays demonstrated greater potency of NAs-HSA-Dox on colony formation compared to doxorubicin. Western blot analysis indicated increased apoptotic markers cleaved Parp, cleaved caspase 3 and phosphorylated H2AX in NAs-HSA-Dox treated DIPG neurospheres. Live cell content and confocal imaging demonstrated significantly higher uptake of NAs-HSA-Dox into DIPG neurospheres compared to doxorubicin alone. Despite the potency of the NAs in vitro, treatment of an orthotopic model of DIPG showed no antitumour effect. This disparate outcome may be due to the integrity of the blood-brain barrier and highlights the need to develop therapies to enhance penetration of drugs into DIPG.

Polysaccharide-Based Nanomaterials for Ocular Drug Delivery: A Perspective

Ocular drug delivery is one of the most challenging issues in ophthalmology because of the complex physiological structure of the eye. Polysaccharide-based nanomaterials have been extensively investigated in recent years as ideal carriers for enhancing the bioavailability of drugs in the ocular system because of their biocompatibility and drug solubilization. From this perspective, we discuss the structural instability of polysaccharides and its impact on the synthesis process; examine the potential for developing bioactive polysaccharide-based ocular drug nanocarriers; propose four strategies for designing novel drug delivery nanomaterials; and suggest reviewing the behavior of nanomaterials in ocular tissues.